Tavuk Dünyası Brand Guidelines: A 2012 Maltepe Chicken Chain, Franchised Across Turkey

Five young founders and a seafront first branch.

Tavuk Dünyası, which means “Chicken World” in Turkish, opened its first restaurant in February 2012 on the Süreyyapaşa seafront in Istanbul’s Maltepe district, on the Asian side of the city, the company says. Ekonomi Gazetesi columnist Vahap Munyar wrote in October 2026 that five young entrepreneurs opened that first branch as the start of what they meant to become a fast-food chain, and Forbes Türkiye reported in January 2026 that the brand was set up in 2012 under a company called Pardo Food.

The chain grew quickly enough to draw a private-equity buyer. According to Munyar, Mediterra Capital, a fund whose co-founders include Ahmet Faralyalı and Murat Erkurt, bought a majority stake in 2015, and later took over the remaining shares from the five founders to own the whole company. Forbes Türkiye gives a different sequence: GRI Gıda, a Mediterra affiliate, took a position in 2015, and the fund bought the company in 2017, when it had 140 branches, 120 of them trading. The company’s own history dates the investment to 2015, through Global Restaurant Investments S.A.R.L.

Management changed with the owners. The company says Volkan Mumcu became its chief executive in 2017, and Munyar dates his appointment to the same year. In 2020 Mediterra invested in Dürümle, a wrap chain founded by two entrepreneurs, and Mumcu’s role became chief executive of the combined Tavuk Dünyası & Dürümle Grup. Ekonomi Gazetesi dates Dürümle’s founding to 2018; Forbes Türkiye gives 2020.

Marinated chicken served in pans.

The menu centres on chicken cooked to order. The company says its chicken is marinated for 12 to 14 hours in sauces and spices kept as house recipes, then prepared in individual pans. Named dishes it highlights include Kekiklim, Şefin Tavası, “the chef’s pan,” and Közlüce. The menu on its website is grouped into chicken dishes, grilled chicken, köfte, salads, soups, starters, desserts and drinks, with a children’s section called Çocuk Dünyası, “Children’s World,” which repeats the “world” of the main name.

Ordering formats have been added over time. The company says it launched a delivery service called Şeften İste, “ask the chef,” and later a build-your-own-plate option, Kendi Tabağını Oluştur, which was extended to the children’s menu. Its website carries an order button for Şeften İste beside a franchising page and a list of locations.

Production is centralised. Munyar reported that the chain set up its first processing plant, of about 7,000 square metres, in Ankara in 2020, and the company places that plant in Ankara’s Başkent organised industrial zone. On a visit published in October 2026, Munyar toured a new factory in Gebze, east of Istanbul, with about 8,000 square metres of covered space, which had started work about a month earlier. Mumcu told him that about 55 percent of the business lay in the Marmara region, so the Gebze plant put production where demand is, instead of sending several lorry-loads a day from Ankara. He also said the plants neither raise nor slaughter chickens: they buy cut breasts and thighs from large Turkish poultry producers, marinate them for 12 to 14 hours in vacuum tumblers to house recipes, pack them and ship them to the branches.

The workforce is large. Mumcu told Ekonomi Gazetesi that the Tavuk Dünyası and Dürümle network employed more than 6,000 people, about half of them women, and that company-run restaurants had moved to two days off a week for staff, made permanent on 1 June 2024.

How Turkish chains present themselves.

Turkish café, bakery, kebab and casual-dining chains tend to build their names around a single dish or a single place. Some carry a city in the name, as Mado does with Maraş, the older name of Kahramanmaraş; others carry the food itself, as Simit Sarayı does with the sesame-covered simit. On their own websites the companies present the dish first and the shop second, with menus organised by named dishes such as künefe, baklava, simit or döner rather than by abstract product lines.

Many of these chains grew by moving street food indoors. Hürriyet Daily News wrote in 2013 that simit, once sold from carts, had become a large business run by chain restaurants, and the companies themselves describe their shopfronts as cafés, bakeries or restaurants with seating, counters and displays that make the food the main sight.

Franchising carries the brands abroad. Turkish chains publish franchise pages and lists of foreign branches, and some work through master franchisees that run a whole region; Daily Sabah reported in 2017 that a Saudi retail group had held such a franchise for Simit Sarayı across the Middle East and North Africa since 2014. Shops abroad often sit in malls and on main shopping streets, according to the companies’ own branch lists.

Ownership is usually described plainly on corporate pages: a family company, a holding company behind several brands, or a founding partnership that later sold a minority stake. This guide sets out who founded each brand, who owns it now and where its food is made, using dated press reports where they exist and marking what rests only on the company’s own word.

A franchise map and a 2026 change of shareholders.

Most branches are franchised. Munyar reported in October 2026 that there were 343 Tavuk Dünyası restaurants in 59 cities, of which 62 belonged to the company and the rest, about 85 percent, were run by franchisees; with 209 Dürümle restaurants, the group had more than 500. Forbes Türkiye had counted more than 330 Tavuk Dünyası branches in 57 cities in January 2026. The company says it opened its first restaurant in Cyprus, in Girne, and that its 100th, 200th, 250th and 300th restaurants opened as the network spread.

The shareholder register changed in 2026. Forbes Türkiye reported on 14 January 2026, citing a statement from Esas Holding, that a consortium had bought 44 percent of both Tavuk Dünyası and Dürümle. Its members were Esas Private Equity with a fund managed by Tacirler Portföy, Lycian Capital with a fund managed by Azimut Group, a fund managed by Qinvest Portföy, and Fiba Holding; the amount was not disclosed. Mumcu told Munyar that the transfer took place in February 2026 and that Mediterra Capital remained the majority shareholder.

The look has been reworked twice, the company says. Its restaurants were redesigned in the 2018–2019 period for a warmer, more relaxed atmosphere, and the logo and wider visual identity were renewed in the 2022–2023 period. The name has stayed the same since the Maltepe opening, and the “world” in it is reused across sub-brands such as the children’s menu.

For a design guide, Tavuk Dünyası shows how a single word, “world,” can be stretched across a menu, a children’s range and a franchise network while the owners change behind it. Compare it with Köfteci Yusuf, a Turkish grill chain that runs its own branches, and Burger King. For this guide we use paprika orange, deep chilli and thyme green on warm cream with a rounded sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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