ALBAIK Brand Guidelines: The 1974 Jeddah Chicken Shop Renamed in 1986

A Jeddah restaurant that changed its name in 1986.

ALBAIK — the company writes the name in capitals, and the press also prints it as Al Baik or Albaik — is a fried-chicken restaurant chain from Jeddah, the Saudi port city on the Red Sea. Its website dates the story to 1974, when Shakour AbuGhazalah opened a restaurant in the city with the aim of serving good food quickly and courteously in a clean, welcoming room; the company says he put his savings into the venture. Arab News, reporting in June 2021, also gave Jeddah and 1974 as the place and year the chain was established.

The first restaurant had another name. In a February 2023 history of the chain, the Indonesian news site Kompas reported that it opened as Broast Restaurant, and that a second outlet followed two years later in Jeddah’s Al Dakheel building. According to the same report, the founder signed an exclusive trading agreement with an overseas firm and used his own blend of ingredients and his own equipment to make the chicken. The company’s website still uses the word “Broast” when it describes the dish it started with.

The business was then rebuilt by the next generation. Kompas reported that the founder’s sons Ihsan and Rami AbuGhazalah, both recent university graduates at the time, studied how to cook the chicken, how a food business runs and how food technology could keep quality consistent and kitchens efficient. Over three years from 1984 they worked out a set of 18 seasoning recipes, the report said, and with operations, marketing and packaging improved they chose a new brand. In 1986 Broast Restaurant became ALBAIK. English Wikipedia gives the same year for the registration of ALBAIK as a trademark in Saudi Arabia, and says a spicy version of the chicken, Harrag, joined the menu in 1994, followed by jumbo shrimp in 1995.

Today the website is signed by ALBAIK Food Systems Company and opens with the line “Since 1974”. Its footer states that the ALBAIK name and logo are registered trademarks of ELBAIK Food Systems Company S.A., and the site runs in English and Arabic, where the name is written البيك.

From Jeddah to Mecca, Riyadh and the Gulf.

For more than a decade ALBAIK stayed in its home city. English Wikipedia dates its first restaurant in Mecca to 1990 — the year Kompas also gives — followed by Medina in 2001 and Yanbu in 2006. In 2002 the company introduced ALBAIK Express, a food-court format with a shorter menu, at a mall in Mecca, and in 2013 it opened its first express restaurant at a highway petrol station on the road between Medina and Jeddah, English Wikipedia says.

The move beyond the western region came later. English Wikipedia lists Buraydah, in Qassim, in 2015 as the chain’s first restaurant outside the Hejaz, then Jizan in 2016, Riyadh in 2018 and three branches in Dammam in 2019, one of them at King Fahd International Airport. By June 2021, Arab News reported, ALBAIK had more than 120 branches across Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.

Bahrain was the first step abroad. English Wikipedia dates the first Bahraini branches to December 2020, at Sultan Mall in Zayed Town and at Bahrain International Airport; Arab News counted three branches there by the end of that year. The United Arab Emirates followed in June 2021 with a restaurant in The Dubai Mall. Arab News reported that the UAE launch was run with ServQuest, a company set up by National Holding of Abu Dhabi to operate and expand ALBAIK across the seven emirates, and described the Dubai Mall unit as a 355-square-metre restaurant serving chicken, seafood, grilled dishes and vegetarian options. English Wikipedia says ALBAIK had 23 branches in the UAE by May 2025.

Other markets came in steps. In October 2022 ALBAIK announced five mobile restaurants for Qatar, to serve fans during football matches, The Peninsula of Doha reported; English Wikipedia describes that operation as temporary, tied to the 2022 FIFA World Cup. In January 2025, English Wikipedia says, the chain opened in Kuwait, at The Avenues mall.

Chicken, shawarma and grill chains of the region.

The fast-food chains of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Lebanon include several that began as a single restaurant in one city. ALBAIK dates itself to a Jeddah chicken shop opened in 1974 and took its present name in 1986; Kudu opened its first sandwich counter in Riyadh in April 1988. Their histories are told in two places: the companies’ own “our story” pages, and the business press of the Gulf and beyond.

What the companies publish about themselves is often bilingual: ALBAIK’s and Kudu’s websites, for example, run in English and Arabic, with the name set in Latin capitals. Menus are presented by named dishes and meals rather than by price lists: fried-chicken meals and garlic sauce, made-to-order sandwiches and burgers, shawarma wraps, falafel, man’oushe flatbreads and mixed grills, depending on the chain. Open kitchens, drive-throughs, food-court counters and petrol-station units appear as formats in their own right.

Restaurant networks are often counted by the companies themselves, so the numbers change with the date of the page. Expansion abroad often runs through partners: ALBAIK entered the UAE in 2021 with an Abu Dhabi operator, and Kudu opened its first franchise outside Saudi Arabia, in Kuwait, in 2026. Ownership can change too: Kudu passed from family ownership to private-equity investors in 2015 and to a regional investment group in 2022.

This guide sets out what can be checked about each chain — who founded it, who owns it, where it trades and which dishes it names — and attributes what rests only on the company’s word. The palettes and typefaces shown are unofficial interpretations, and no logo, sign or packaging is reproduced.

One name, two scripts, many formats.

The menu is built around fried chicken. In 2023 Kompas listed the ALBAIK Chicken Meal alongside chicken fillet nuggets, a chicken fillet sandwich and burger, a jumbo shrimp meal, a fish fillet meal, hummus, coleslaw and ice cream, and singled out the garlic sauce served with the chicken as a dip. The company’s own website currently features a fish fillet burger, tahina sauce, four-piece and eight-piece chicken meals, hummus, coleslaw and corn in a cup. English Wikipedia names a sister company, Aquat Food Industries, as the main producer and supplier of the menu.

The chain has grown through formats as much as through cities: full restaurants, the Express food-court counter, petrol-station units, airport branches and, in Qatar, mobile restaurants. On its website the company sets the name in capitals in Latin script and gives the Arabic form, البيك, beside it.

The palette in this guide is not taken from ALBAIK’s signs, packaging or website. It pairs a warm red with a spice brown for type, a garlic cream ground, a saffron gold accent and a tahina beige, tones chosen for a guide about a fried-chicken counter; the brown is dark enough to carry small text on the cream.

For a design guide, ALBAIK shows how a single city’s chicken restaurant can keep one short name, written in two scripts, across many formats and several countries. Compare Kudu, the Riyadh sandwich-and-burger chain founded in 1988, and KFC, another chain built on fried chicken. For this guide we use a warm red, a spice brown and a garlic cream with a rounded sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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