Chester’s Brand Guidelines: CP’s 1988 MBK Grill-Chicken Chain and Its Chilli Fish Sauce

A grilled-chicken counter at MBK in 1988.

Chester’s began in Bangkok in 1988. Its first branch opened at the Mah Boon Krong shopping centre, now MBK Center, under the name Chester’s Grill Chicken, the Thai marketing magazine Brand Buffet reported in September 2020, giving the year as 2531 in the Thai calendar. The business magazine Marketeer gave the same first branch and the same year in November 2018. The opening dish was grilled chicken, followed by baked rice with grilled chicken, according to Brand Buffet.

The name has changed twice. In 1991 the chain became Chester’s Grill, a change Brand Buffet says was made to open the menu to a wider range of food. In 2013 the name was shortened again to plain Chester’s, with a new English tagline that pointed to a broader choice of dishes. The grilled chicken stayed on the menu, but the name no longer tied the chain to a single item.

The chain has always sat inside Thailand’s Charoen Pokphand group. Inside Retail Asia called Chester’s a subsidiary of Charoen Pokphand Group in November 2012. In 2020 Brand Buffet placed it within Charoen Pokphand Foods (CPF), the group’s listed food company, as the restaurant end of a “feed, farm, food” business that runs from animal feed through livestock farming to processed food, retail and restaurants. The restaurants are run by Chester’s Food Co., Ltd., and in a January 2024 release CP Foods described Chester’s as a chain of quick-service restaurants in Thailand under CP Foods.

That ownership shapes how the press writes about the brand. Brand Buffet framed Chester’s as a Thai quick-service chain that had lasted more than three decades in a market where the big quick-service chains came from abroad, and named the group’s own supply of raw ingredients, its capital and its product-development staff as advantages the chain could draw on.

Rice dishes and a bowl of chilli fish sauce.

The menu grew outward from the grill. According to Brand Buffet, the company first added rice dishes, starting with baked rice and grilled chicken and a karaage rice with a sweet Japanese-style sauce. It later added a spicy chicken rice, khao kai phet Chester’s, after noticing how much its Thai customers liked spicy food, and that dish went on to sell more than the grilled chicken rice. By 2020 the rice range ran to more than ten dishes, and the whole menu to some thirty to forty items, including grilled chicken, burgers and hot dogs, spaghetti and snacks such as New Orleans-style wings and chicken nuggets.

The detail that recurs in coverage is a condiment. Each branch serves nam pla prik, fish sauce with sliced chillies, alongside the rice dishes, Brand Buffet reported. It began when a CP executive found the early baked chicken rice too sweet and suggested a sauce to cut the sweetness. The sauce is made fresh in each branch every day rather than in a central kitchen, and staff slice the chillies by hand because a machine cracked them; the garlic is cut by machine. The company told the magazine that some customers had asked to buy the sauce, but that it keeps for only a day, so it is offered only at the table.

The grill itself has been reworked with new flavours. In 2018 Marketeer listed grilled chicken in gochujang, New Orleans and barbecue styles among the chain’s newer items, and reported that from late 2017 the company had set out to reach customers aged roughly 18 to 30 through digital media and influencers, after years in which its main customers were working people and families. Brand Buffet described a routine of two new dishes about every two months, one rice dish and one chicken item, built by changing the protein and the sauce while keeping the rice and vegetables the same. In January 2024 CP Foods announced a chicken-and-fries dish with a Thai-tea sauce, made with the Thai tea brand ChaTraMue.

Thai restaurant and café chains.

Thailand’s restaurant, bakery and café chains tend to present themselves through the places where people meet them: shopping centres, hypermarkets, community malls and their own stand-alone sites. Thai Wikipedia says most MK Suki branches sit in shopping centres and community malls, and in 2015 the Bangkok Post described MK Restaurant Group opening a food mall of its own in Bangkok, London Street, with five of its brands under one roof.

Menus are published by named dishes and drinks rather than by abstract promises. Chains sort their websites into sets, single dishes, desserts and drinks, run seasonal promotions around one dish or sauce, and tie repeat visits to member cards; MK and Yayoi, for example, share the MKONE card. Shopfronts, mascots and packaging are described brand by brand in each guide, as far as dated sources and the companies’ own pages show them.

Ownership is often layered. Several chains in this series sit inside larger groups, among them MK Restaurant Group, PTT OR, the CP group and Food Passion, and some international brands reach Thailand under licence: Yayoi, a Japanese set-meal chain, is run in Thailand by MK Restaurant Group under rights from the Japanese company Plenus, the Bangkok Post reported in 2017. Thai chains also go abroad through franchisees and joint ventures, as MK did in Japan, Vietnam and Singapore.

Corporate pages usually tell a founder story, a list of milestone branches and a record of franchise partners, and listed companies add filings with the Stock Exchange of Thailand. This guide separates what independent, dated sources record (founding dates, owners, listings, branch counts as of a stated date) from what rests only on a company’s own pages, and attributes the latter plainly.

Malls, hypermarkets and petrol stations.

Chester’s is built around Thai retail sites rather than standalone restaurants. In September 2020 Brand Buffet counted more than 200 branches across Thailand, about half run by the company and half by franchisees, mostly in shopping centres, hypermarkets and petrol stations; Marketeer gave a figure of about 200 branches in November 2018. Both outlets reported delivery through a call centre and the chain’s own website, and CP Foods’ 2024 release added food-delivery apps.

The chain uses several store sizes. Brand Buffet described large restaurants of more than 300 square metres, mostly early branches such as the one at CP Tower; mid-sized units of about 100 square metres with around 40 seats; small units aimed at takeaway and delivery; and hot-dog kiosks set in front of stores. In 2020 the magazine also reported a co-working layout, with power points and counter seating, at The Mall Ngamwongwan and at Cosmo in Muang Thong Thani, and a drinks-refill trial at Siam Square, The Mall Tha Phra and The Mall Ngamwongwan.

Marketeer described the chain in 2018 as a local grilled-chicken brand with strong, spicy flavours, a character it said Chester’s had kept since its first counter opened, while the newer dishes were styled for younger diners. Across both magazines the constants are the same three things: grilled chicken, rice dishes and the bowl of chilli fish sauce on the table.

For a design guide, Chester’s shows how a quick-service brand can drop a product word from its name as its menu widens, moving from Chester’s Grill Chicken to Chester’s Grill to Chester’s over 25 years. Compare KFC, the fried-chicken chain Marketeer named in the same Thai market, and Bar B Q Plaza, another Thai restaurant chain. For this guide we use a chilli red, a grill gold and charcoal with a rounded sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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