Chicken Republic Brand Guidelines: A 2004 Apapa Chicken Shop and the Food Concepts Chain

A Lagos chicken shop inside a larger food company.

Chicken Republic began in Lagos in 2004. BusinessDay, the Lagos business daily, reported in April 2024 that the chain was founded by Deji Akinyanju in 2004 and opened its first store in Lagos that year; English Wikipedia and a 2024 report in the Lagos marketing title Marketing Edge place that first restaurant in Apapa, the port district of the city. English Wikipedia says Akinyanju had spent about sixteen years working in the United Kingdom, including a period with Andersen Consulting, now Accenture, in London, before he returned to Nigeria to build a business at home.

The restaurant brand sits inside a larger company. Food Concepts Plc says on its website that it was incorporated in December 1999 as Food Concepts & Entertainment Limited and began trading in 2000. In its early years, the company says, it held franchises from South African quick-service operators and ran those brands in Nigeria, then bought the Butterfield bakery brand and developed names of its own, among them Chicken Republic, PieXpress, Yum Yum and The Chop Box. English Wikipedia says the first Chicken Republic drew at first on a franchise relationship with the South African chain Chicken Licken, before Akinyanju set the business up as an independent, Nigerian-owned brand.

The corporate shape changed over the following years. English Wikipedia says the company converted from a private to a public limited company on 10 May 2009, taking the name Food Concepts Plc, and that its shares trade on the NASD over-the-counter securities exchange in Nigeria rather than on the main stock exchange. After what the company describes as a corporate restructuring and divestment, it now owns and manages three proprietary brands: Chicken Republic; PieXpress, a pies-and-pastries brand for customers on the move; and The Chop Box, which serves Nigerian dishes such as jollof rice and egusi soup, according to its brands page.

Rice, chicken and a combo for hard times.

Chicken Republic is a chicken chain first, but its menu is built around Nigerian staples. BusinessDay described it in 2024 as a fast-food chain and franchise that specialises in chicken recipes, especially fried chicken. In 2016, the paper reported, it introduced a combo called the Refuel Meal, which paired jollof or fried rice with a piece of chicken, at a time when a recession was squeezing household budgets; BusinessDay counted it among the restaurants that brought combo meals into the Nigerian market at that point.

The brand has also tried meals without chicken. In April 2022 Nairametrics reported that the chain had launched an “Egg Star” combo of rice, boiled eggs and tomato stew under a “Breakfast on a budget” promotion, served only in its Lagos stores in the morning, and that the launch set off a lively conversation on social media about a chicken chain selling a chicken-free plate.

Its look and its formats changed in 2019. BusinessDay reported that Chicken Republic rebranded its image that year and pursued what the paper called a “Sell-on-the-Go” strategy, setting up small Express kiosks alongside its larger restaurants; an investor-relations analyst quoted by the paper said kiosks were cheaper and easier to run than big outlets. Food Concepts says on its website that PieXpress stores share locations with Chicken Republic, so that one site can carry both brands.

Delivery has become part of the picture too. A senior research manager at Euromonitor International told BusinessDay in 2024 that the chain’s partnership with the Glovo delivery app had helped its growth, along with deals such as “buy one get one free” meals and a steadily larger footprint. A marketing professor at Lagos Business School, quoted in the same article, said the brand positions itself as “chicken experts” and works to keep the taste and experience the same from one location to the next. Food Concepts, for its part, describes the Chicken Republic recipe as a blend of West African herbs and spices; that is the company’s own description.

African restaurant and café chains.

Africa’s restaurant and café chains present themselves through a small set of public surfaces: the shopfront and its signage, the menu with its named dishes, the delivery and loyalty apps, and the corporate pages that explain who founded a brand and who owns it now. Several of the groups in this guide run their brands as franchise networks, and their corporate sites set out franchise terms, country lists and brand line-ups beside the menus.

Ownership is often grouped. English Wikipedia describes Famous Brands, formerly the Steers Group, as a South African company founded in 1960, based in Midrand and listed in Johannesburg, which runs its restaurant brands on a franchise model. Spur Corporation traces its start to the Golden Spur, opened in Newlands, Cape Town, in 1967, and its chains include Spur Steak Ranches and RocoMamas, according to the same encyclopaedia.

Further north the pattern repeats. Simbisa Brands says it opened its first Chicken Inn in 1987 and now trades in nine African countries, running its own brands such as Chicken Inn and Pizza Inn beside franchised names. English Wikipedia describes Chicken Republic, founded in 2004, as the flagship of the Lagos-based Food Concepts, with restaurants in Nigeria and Ghana. In Kenya, café chains such as Java House and Artcaffé have passed through private equity owners, each change reported in the business press.

This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand: when and where it began, who has owned it, how many outlets a dated source counts, and how its menus, shopfronts and own websites describe it. Counts and ownership are given with their dates, and anything that rests only on a company’s own word is marked as such.

Private equity, a long-serving chief executive and two counts.

Private equity has shaped the company behind the brand. English Wikipedia says Development Partners International (DPI), a pan-African private equity firm, became the majority shareholder in Food Concepts, and that in 2021 DPI sold a 31% stake to the investment firm African Capital Alliance (ACA) while keeping its majority; the two firms said the deal was meant to support the group’s regional expansion. The same source says Kofi Abunu, who had joined the business as a general manager for the Chicken Republic brand in about 2007, became managing director and chief executive of Food Concepts in March 2022. Marketing Edge named him in that role in May 2024, when the company marked twenty years of the brand.

Store counts vary with the source and the date. As of April 2024, BusinessDay put Chicken Republic at more than 150 locations across Nigeria and Ghana. In May 2024, Marketing Edge quoted an anniversary post by Abunu giving more than 300 locations across the two countries, and the Food Concepts website, read in November 2026, also refers to more than 300 locations. English Wikipedia says the chain operates mainly in Nigeria, with stores in cities including Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt, has a presence in Ghana, and also trades through franchising; the company’s website carries a franchising section setting out how investors can apply.

Food Concepts has kept other businesses close to the restaurants. English Wikipedia says Akinyanju also set up a poultry venture outside Lagos, named Ganic, to give the restaurant business a steadier supply of chicken, and that the company once ran Butterfield and Yum Yum before narrowing to its three present brands.

For a design guide, Chicken Republic shows how a chicken chain can wrap a national dish such as jollof rice into a fast-food format, and how kiosks, pastry counters and delivery apps can all carry one name. Compare Mr Bigg’s, the older Lagos chain that grew out of a department-store coffee shop, and Nando’s, another chicken restaurant brand with African roots. For this guide we use a chilli red, a warm saffron and a charcoal brown with a rounded sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Chicken Republic’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.