Mom’s Touch Brand Guidelines: Korea’s Chicken Burger Chain, From 1997 to Tokyo

A brand name, a spin-off and a slow start.

Mom’s Touch was founded in South Korea in 1997, The Korea Times reported in September 2026. Korean Wikipedia says it began as a restaurant brand of the company Haemaro, and describes it as set up as an affiliate of Popeyes in Korea. English Wikipedia says the name reflects the idea that the food is made the way a mother would make it for her family; Korean Wikipedia translates it simply as “a mother’s touch.”

The brand became a company of its own in 2004. Korean and English Wikipedia say that, as part of a restructuring, Chung Hyun-sik took over Mom’s Touch on condition that he took on its losses, and spun it off as Haemaro Food Service. Both encyclopedias say the business did not make an operating profit from 2004 to 2010 and first turned a profit in 2013.

The company later changed its name to match the brand. Korean Wikipedia says Haemaro Food Service became Mom’s Touch & Co. on 29 March 2021. English Wikipedia adds that the chain replaced its earlier red logo with a yellow one, without giving a date.

The chain grew mainly through franchising. Korean Wikipedia gives 1,262 franchised stores as of April 2020, and The Korea Times wrote in September 2026 that Mom’s Touch operated more than 1,400 stores in Korea.

Chicken burgers first, then beef.

Mom’s Touch sells burgers and fried chicken from the same counter. English Wikipedia lists its main products as fried chicken, chicken burgers and hamburgers, with chicken in flavours such as spicy, honey and garlic, and burgers including a chicken thigh burger, a chicken fillet burger and a bulgogi burger. Korean Wikipedia names its signature items as the Thigh Burger, the Incredible Burger and a series of Nashville hot chicken. English Wikipedia lists side dishes such as french fries, fried shrimp, salads and chicken wraps, and adds a spicy bulgogi burger and a smaller Jr. Burger to the beef side of the menu.

The Korea Times called it a “chicken sandwich chain” in May 2026, but the menu has been moving toward beef. On 10 September 2026 it launched three smash burgers, the Smoky Smash Burger, the Smash Burger and the Double Smash Burger, and it later added a Grilled Bulgogi Burger to a grilled range that already included the Grilled Burger and the Grilled Bacon Burger, Chosun Biz reported in October 2026.

Its advertising leans on humour. English Wikipedia says its television commercials have mostly been comic, including one that contrasts small portions served elsewhere with larger ones at Mom’s Touch, and that its restaurants have appeared in webtoons, the Korean online comics. Korean Wikipedia lists a long run of actors and entertainers who have fronted its campaigns since 2010.

Abroad, the chain has tried several formats. Korean Wikipedia says its first store outside Korea opened in Taiwan in 2016. English Wikipedia says its first American store opened in Concord, California, in 2018, and that by August 2024 it no longer operated in the United States. The Korea Times also lists Thailand among its markets.

Design and documentation.

Korean fried-chicken and hot-pot chains tend to present themselves through what happens to the food, not through a mascot. A chicken chain’s company pages will often explain a sauce before they explain a logo: a soy-and-garlic glaze, a chilli version, a honey version, each with its own year of launch and its own name on the menu. Kyochon, for example, describes sauce brushed on piece by piece and has carried the brush into its wordmark; bb.q points to a training centre it calls Chicken University. Hot-pot chains put the pot itself at the centre of the table, so the broth, the burner and the plates of raw ingredients around it become part of how the brand is seen.

Shop interiors and menus are where these identities become consistent. As franchise networks grew into the hundreds and then the thousands, the companies describe bringing in uniform interiors, standard menu boards and set colour schemes; Kyochon, for one, dates uniform shop interiors and orange-based menu boards to 1999, the year it passed 100 shops. Delivery boxes, sauce packs and takeout bags carry the same marks, and some chains have built whole shop formats around delivery and takeout.

Names are usually plain. Menus are organised by sauce or cooking method, and side brands are given short, descriptive names of their own; several groups now run cafés, bars or noodle formats under separate names alongside the main chain. Some write their names in Korean characters, some in Latin letters, and some with punctuation or a founding year built into the mark.

Corporate pages fill in the rest: who founded the company and when, which group owns it, where it is listed, and how many shops and countries it reports. Those figures come from the companies, and dated press reports are the way to check them. This guide reads each brand through those pages and through independent reporting, and treats colour and type as an interpretation, not a copy.

A private equity owner and a push into Japan.

Ownership changed in 2019. On 5 November 2019 Haemaro Food Service was sold to the Korean private equity firm KL&Partners, Korean Wikipedia says. The Korea Times reported in May 2026 that KL&Partners bought a 57 percent stake from the founder in 2019, and in 2022 took the company off the stock market by buying the remaining 43 percent.

The same report said KL&Partners had tried to sell Mom’s Touch in 2022 without reaching a deal, after which the owner concentrated on opening stores outside Korea, and that in 2026 it had asked investment banks and accounting firms for proposals to manage a new sale. No sale had been agreed at the time of that report. The Korea Times placed the move among several private equity owners of Korean fast food chains returning to the sale market, noting that the Carlyle Group had completed its purchase of KFC Korea in April 2026.

The newest market is Japan. The Korea Times reported in September 2026 that Mom’s Touch entered Japan in 2024 with a directly run store in Shibuya, Tokyo, and that it had moved its Japanese office to Shinjuku and opened its sixth Japanese store, in the Shinjuku Park Tower building. The company said that store would also serve as a training site for franchise owners and store managers, and that the new office and store were meant to build a hub for expanding its franchise business in Japan, serving the surrounding office district at the same time. The Korea Times described Mom’s Touch as a Korean burger and fried chicken chain with stores in Mongolia, Thailand and Japan.

For a design guide, Mom’s Touch shows how a warm, domestic name and a switch to a bright yellow mark can carry a franchise from Korean neighbourhoods to Tokyo office districts. Compare Popeyes, the fried chicken brand that Korean Wikipedia links to its origins, and KFC. For this guide we use mustard yellow, a deep gold and cream with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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