Steers Brand Guidelines: A Highlands North Grill, Orange & Purple, and Famous Brands

A Johannesburg family business and a flame grill.

Steers began in the northern suburbs of Johannesburg. The brand’s own history timeline dates the opening of the first Steers restaurant, in Highlands North, to 1960, and says the restaurant has served its “Flame-Grilled taste” from the start. English Wikipedia also gives 1960 as the founding year of the business. Famous Brands, the listed group that grew out of Steers, gives a slightly different sequence in its 2024 integrated annual report: it says the group was founded in the 1960s by George Halamandres as a Halamandres and Halamandaris family business, that the first Seven Steer opened in Highlands North in 1963, and that the first franchised Steers restaurant followed in 1965. Both dates are given here because the company’s own publications do not agree.

The name took time to settle. English Wikipedia says the business traded under several steakhouse names, among them Seven Steer, Branded Steer and Longhorn Steer, before it became simply Steers, without giving a date for each change. The Steers timeline says that in 1970 the chain opened a restaurant on Jeppe Street in central Johannesburg and became known there for beef burgers, hand-cut chips and very thick milkshakes — the three items the brand still leads with on its website.

Supply was part of the business early on. Famous Brands says its first central kitchen opened on Market Street, Johannesburg, in 1971, and describes vertical integration — making and delivering much of what its restaurants sell — as central to the group ever since. The Steers timeline adds that by 1988 the chain had grown to 50 restaurants and built a supply factory in Midrand, between Johannesburg and Pretoria, with its own bakery, butchery and sauce bottling plant, and that a training facility for restaurant staff was added there in 1990. Midrand remains the group’s headquarters, according to English Wikipedia.

One newspaper advertisement and a franchise network.

The turn to franchising came in 1983. According to the brand’s timeline, the company placed a single advertisement in a newspaper, received hundreds of replies and opened 15 new restaurants over the following two years; English Wikipedia tells the same story. By 1993, the timeline says, Steers had opened its 250th restaurant and was trading beyond South Africa, in Botswana, Swaziland (now Eswatini), Namibia and Zimbabwe.

The business went public in 1994, when Steers Holdings listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange; English Wikipedia dates the listing to November 1994. The holding company then grew by adding other chains. Famous Brands lists, among its milestones, the purchase of Debonairs Pizza in 1997, the launch of its own Fishaways brand in 1998, the purchase of Wimpy South Africa in 2003, Mugg & Bean in 2009 and Milky Lane in 2011; English Wikipedia dates the Debonairs purchase to 1999 and the Mugg & Bean purchase to July 2009. Steers Holdings was renamed Famous Brands Limited in 2004, according to the group’s 2024 report, or in 2001, according to English Wikipedia.

Sauces became a product line of their own. The timeline says Steers had sold its bottled sauces in most of its restaurants since 1986 and put them on supermarket shelves in 1989. In 2013, it says, Simba made a potato-chip flavour based on Steers Monkey Gland Sauce, and Steers opened in the United Kingdom, at Lavender Hill in Battersea, London; English Wikipedia says that restaurant had closed by 2022. The timeline also records a children’s meal, the Brat Pack, from 1996, the launch of the Steers app in 2013 and the launch of Steers delivery in 2022.

Today Steers belongs to Famous Brands, the JSE-listed group. EWN reported in May 2026 that the group’s brands include Steers, Debonairs Pizza, Wimpy and Mugg & Bean, under chief executive Darren Hele. Famous Brands’ 2024 report describes a business built on four parts — brands, manufacturing, logistics and retail — and says it runs franchised, master-licensed and company-owned restaurants, with franchise partners using the whole business format, from the name and trademarks to recipes and know-how.

How the category presents itself.

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.

Orange, purple and the word “Real”.

The look has been revised more than once. The Steers timeline says that around the time of the 1994 listing the company reassessed its image, added “a splash of orange” and took up purple, explaining that every fire has some purple at its core, and adopted the line “Real Food made Real Good”. In 2011, it says, the brand refreshed both its look and its restaurants and narrowed its message to “Real Burgers”. The current website is organised around the same word, with sections headed Real Food, Real Story, Real Difference and Real Talk, and credits its design to Sauce Advertising. The phrase “Flame-Grilled” runs through the menu pages and the timeline alike, and English Wikipedia lists “Flame-Grilled, It Just Tastes Better” as the current slogan.

The newest market is in Asia. On 9 December 2025 Famous Brands said it had concluded master licence agreements with Mesra Retail & Café, a subsidiary of Petronas Dagangan Berhad, giving Mesra exclusive rights to develop Steers and Debonairs Pizza restaurants across Malaysia, and that the first combined Steers and Debonairs Pizza restaurant had opened; the company placed it in Kuala Lumpur. South Africa’s public broadcaster Channel Africa reported the same agreements. The Malaysian news site SAYS reported on 29 October 2026 that the brands’ second Malaysian location had opened on 28 October at a Petronas station in Mutiara Damansara, including Malaysia’s first Steers drive-thru, following a debut in Bangi in December 2025, and that Mesra holds the master licence for both brands.

For a design guide, Steers shows how a single cooking method — the flame grill — can carry a name, a colour story and a menu across six decades and several countries. Compare Debonairs Pizza, its stablemate at Famous Brands and its partner brand in Malaysia, and Nando’s, another restaurant chain that began in Johannesburg. For this guide we use a flame orange and a deep purple with a heavy sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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