Mary Brown’s Brand Guidelines: A 1969 St. John’s Golden Skillet, Taters & MB Chicken

A franchise in St. John’s, renamed.

Mary Brown’s began in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, in 1969. CBC News reported in December 2013 that Pat Tarrant and Cyril Fleming opened the first restaurant that year under the name Golden Skillet, added two more in the first year and soon changed the name to Mary Brown’s. English Wikipedia adds that the two had bought the rights to open the first Canadian franchise of Golden Skillet, a fried-chicken chain from Richmond, Virginia, that the first restaurant was in the Avalon Mall, and that they had to rename it for legal reasons.

The new name honoured a real person. The company says Mary Brown was a woman whose fried-chicken recipe her family had enjoyed for years, and that the recipe was bought by two businessmen from Newfoundland; after a short time trading as Golden Skillet, it says, the restaurant took her name. English Wikipedia identifies her as the wife of Golden Skillet’s founder, Clifton W. Guthrie, and gives an early trading name as Mary Brown’s Virginia Fried Chicken.

The chain soon moved beyond the island. The company dates its first two Ontario restaurants, in Oshawa and Mississauga, to 1972. English Wikipedia describes later growth west to Alberta, through the rest of the Atlantic provinces and into Manitoba and Saskatchewan, and more recently to British Columbia and a restaurant in Yellowknife, in the Northwest Territories.

From about 67 restaurants to about 300.

The company’s modern shape dates from 2007, when the Newfoundland entrepreneur Gregory Roberts acquired the brand, the company says. English Wikipedia describes him as a chartered accountant from Triton, Newfoundland and Labrador, who took over a chain of about 67 restaurants. CBC News gave the count as more than 95 locations in Canada in December 2013. Daily Hive reported 255 Canadian locations in February 2024 and more than 280 a year later, in February 2025. As of November 2026, the company’s website says there are about 300.

Ownership now sits with a small group of brands. In March 2023 the St. John’s newspaper The Telegram, in a report published by SaltWire, named Mary Brown’s parent company as MBI Brands and said it had bought the Toronto burrito chain Fat Bastard Burrito Co. in the summer of 2022. That chain, founded in 2010, had 77 locations in Ontario at the time, the paper said, and its president, Sean Bell, had previously been chief financial officer of Mary Brown’s. It also reported that the Mary Brown’s on Water Street in downtown St. John’s, opened in 2019 to mark the chain’s 50th anniversary in a building the company owns and decorated with a large mural by the artist Kyle Bustin, was closing in March 2023 so that the burrito chain could move into the space.

Abroad, the brand trades under a shorter name, MB Chicken, Daily Hive reported in February 2025. Its international story has more than one starting point. CBC News reported that a Mary Brown’s opened in Istanbul on 27 November 2013, run by a local area developer, keeping signature items such as the Big Mary and taters while adding dishes for Turkish tastes. In February 2024 Daily Hive reported the chain’s first restaurant in the United Kingdom, at Lisburn in Northern Ireland, serving the Big Mary, chicken tenders, taters, poutine and bone-in chicken alongside additions such as halloumi fries and milkshakes; by February 2025 the same publication said two more UK restaurants had opened.

Burgers, chicken and the Canadian counter.

Canada’s home-grown restaurant chains grew up alongside the American franchises that crossed the border, and many still introduce themselves by where they began. Harvey’s dates its first restaurant to Richmond Hill, Ontario, in 1959; Mary Brown’s traces its first to St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, in 1969. Their corporate and franchising pages tell those founding stories, name founders and owners, and describe their franchise networks in their own words.

The chains in this group cover burgers, fried and rotisserie chicken, subs, pizza, juice, salads, Thai dishes and burritos. On their own websites they present themselves through shopfronts, signage, packaging and a handful of named dishes, such as a lead burger or a chicken sandwich, repeated across their restaurants. In Quebec, names and menus appear in French, written as the companies write them.

Ownership is often grouped. Several of these brands belong to larger restaurant companies that run many chains at once: Recipe Unlimited, taken private by Fairfax Financial in October 2022, lists Harvey’s, Swiss Chalet and St-Hubert among its brands, according to the law firm Torys, and Mary Brown’s parent, MBI Brands, bought a Toronto burrito chain in 2022, The Telegram reported. Some restaurants share a building with a sibling brand, as some Harvey’s and Swiss Chalet locations do.

Some of these chains also trade abroad, at times under a shorter name, as Mary Brown’s does with MB Chicken. This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand: who founded it, who owns it and how many restaurants a dated source gives it. It marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word, and its palettes and typefaces are our own interpretation, not the brands’ official ones.

Chicken, taters and a Newfoundland story.

The menu is built around a few named items. The company names its bone-in Signature Chicken, hand-cut Taters made from whole potatoes delivered in big brown bags, the Big Mary chicken sandwich and a coleslaw made in each store. It says the chicken is Canada Grade A, delivered whole and fresh, then marinated, hand-cut and hand-breaded, and that it is cooked in the company’s own proprietary cookers rather than pressure-fried. Those are the company’s own descriptions. It also calls itself “100% Canadian owned and operated.”

Its marketing language has shifted over the years. English Wikipedia says the chain has used the lines “Made Fresh from Scratch” and “100% Canadian,” adopted “Truly Canadian” in 2017 and has used “Crave Delicious” as its main tagline since mid-2019; that last line still heads the company’s website. The same account dates the original logo to the 1970s, an update to 2000 and a refresh in late 2017 as part of a wider rebrand. In October 2021, the encyclopedia says, Mary Brown’s took the naming rights to the Mile One Centre arena in St. John’s for ten years.

English Wikipedia gives the company’s headquarters as Markham, Ontario, while the brand still tells its story from St. John’s: the company’s pages open with the first guest walking through its doors in Newfoundland in 1969, and the downtown St. John’s restaurant was opened for the 50th anniversary, The Telegram reported.

For a design guide, Mary Brown’s shows how a regional name can travel while keeping its home story at the centre, and how one brand can carry two names, Mary Brown’s at home and MB Chicken abroad. Compare KFC, the American fried-chicken chain, and Harvey’s, another Canadian quick-service chain. For this guide we use a brick red, a fried gold and a warm cream with a rounded sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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