The cheap end of fast food is doing best in the fastest-growing part of South Africa's eating-out market. Trade Intelligence, a market researcher, valued the takeaway and fast-food market at R45.5 billion in 2025, up 11.4%, according to Business Day this week. Value brands are gaining ground: Pedro's has more than doubled the number of people who visited it in a four-week period over the past three years, and Chicken Licken and Hungry Lion are moving the same way.
Spur Corporation, the group behind the family Spur restaurants, felt it. In its annual results in August, Spur said competition had intensified across eating out and ordering in, particularly from fast-food chains, deals on the delivery apps and heavy promotions on burgers, pizza and family dining. Its restaurants still grew sales by 6.9% in the year to June, to R12.3 billion.
A Doppio for every kind of spot
Part of its reply sits in Doppio Zero, a 27-restaurant brand in Spur's speciality division where half the trade is breakfast. Spur's results listed three new Doppio formats, each built for a particular channel.
Doppio Caffè goes where people are already stuck for a while. At a Mediclinic hospital it comes with a small shop and a grab-and-go shelf, and chief executive Val Nichas told investors it took close to R2 million in a month. The hotel version, at the Marriott in Sea Point, has a captive crowd at breakfast but is doing, in Nichas's words, "not as well as we want".
Doppio Bistrot, at the Nine Yards development in Rosebank, is company-owned, with private dining. Spur owns the two other Doppios nearby and is not franchising it yet, so the three do not eat into each other's trade. It is doing well, and it is still trading without a liquor licence.
The R1.3 million counter
Doppio ROAM is the smallest of the three, and the one Spur expects to scale. At its smallest it is 50 square metres, just a counter serving coffee, and with a little seating it can go up to 120. The first one opened just after Spur's June year-end, is owned by an existing Doppio franchisee, and cost R1.3 million to set up.
That price is the point. Nichas said the group had spent years looking for a format that would attract a younger investor, one who "maybe only has ZAR 1.3 million or ZAR 1.8 million". Stores like this will probably run as satellites of existing Doppios, with much of the baking done at the main store and brought over.
Spur plans 50 new restaurants in South Africa this financial year, and Nichas believes ROAM is going to be really popular. The first one is already trading in Irene Village Mall in Centurion, opposite a brand new Checkers.
