Usta Dönerci Brand Guidelines: TAB Gıda’s 2013 Döner Chain From the Burger King Operator

A burger operator builds a döner chain.

Usta Dönerci was not founded by a cook with a single shop. It was created in 2013 by TAB Gıda, the company that has run Burger King in Türkiye since the mid-1990s. The company’s own history says TAB Gıda was set up in 1994 and opened its first Burger King restaurant in 1995, and its timeline marks 2013 as the year Usta Dönerci was founded. Turkish Wikipedia’s list of restaurant chains in Türkiye gives the same year and names TAB Gıda as owner and operator.

The name is plain Turkish: “usta” means a master or skilled craftsman, and a “dönerci” is a döner maker or döner shop, so the brand reads as “the master döner maker.” TAB Gıda says it created the brand by combining its experience in quick-service restaurants with that of skilled döner makers, and that it built Usta Dönerci as a fast-service döner restaurant chain.

The launch is also documented in the business press. In an interview with the business weekly Ekonomist published in January 2017, TAB Gıda’s general manager, Caner Dikici, said the company had created Usta Dönerci in 2013 by bringing its 20 years of experience together with döner masters, and that the brand then had close to 60 restaurants. The same magazine had reported in December 2016 that Usta Dönerci had reached 60 branches across Türkiye.

Döner as a fast-service menu.

The menu is organised the way a burger chain organises its board. The Usta Dönerci website groups it into beef döner, chicken döner and köfte, each served in several formats: wrapped as a dürüm, in bread, in the round “Tombik” bread, as İskender-style plates or by weight. Bowls sold under the name “Bi’Kase,” children’s menus, side dishes such as fries, onion rings and rice, and desserts complete the list, and set menus are offered as campaigns. Drinks include ayran and şalgam, a fermented turnip drink, next to soft drinks and coffee.

Ordering follows the same group logic. The website points customers to the Tıkla Gelsin ordering website and app as well as third-party delivery platforms, and carries a restaurant finder. It also states that TAB Gıda is the sole holder of the rights to the Usta Dönerci name and emblem.

Sourcing is presented in the company’s words. TFI TAB Gıda Yatırımları says Usta Dönerci works with suppliers producing to international quality standards, under a policy it sums up as tasty meat from a reliable source, fast service and an accessible price; those are the company’s statements. The group’s timeline also lists a meat-processing plant, Ekur Et, opened in 2016, among the businesses that supply its restaurants.

Growth has been steady, and each count here is given with its date. Ekonomist gave about 60 restaurants in December 2016 and January 2017. Turkish Wikipedia’s list, citing the company in May 2024, gives 155. TFI TAB Gıda Yatırımları’s website gives 205 Usta Dönerci restaurants as of 5 January 2026. In December 2016 Ekonomist also reported that the company had begun taking the brand abroad, starting in Macedonia.

The scale of the parent at launch helps explain the format. In the same December 2016 Ekonomist interview, Caner Dikici listed TAB Gıda’s restaurants in Türkiye as 600 Burger King, 160 Popeyes, 47 Arby’s and 80 Sbarro, alongside the 60 Usta Dönerci units. A month later, Ekonomist placed TAB Gıda among eight multi-brand franchise companies it surveyed, and observed that franchisors had begun creating new brands in the fastest-growing food segments, naming coffee, chicken and döner.

Design and documentation.

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 local brand inside a global franchise operator.

Usta Dönerci’s owner is a large franchise operator. TFI TAB Gıda Yatırımları, the parent, lists Burger King, Popeyes, Sbarro, Arby’s, Usta Dönerci, Usta Pideci and Subway among its brands, plus supply companies for logistics, bakery, potato processing, meat and advertising. Its timeline dates Sbarro to 2006, Popeyes to 2007, Arby’s to 2010, Usta Pideci, a pide brand, to 2019, and Subway to 2022; it also lists Burger City from 1999, home delivery from 2005 and Döner Stop operations from 2018. Today the group says it has some 2,000 restaurants and more than 30,000 employees. It says it operates restaurants beyond Türkiye in North Macedonia, Georgia, Northern Cyprus and China. TFI places itself within the Ata Group, which it says was founded by Ertuğrul Kurdoğlu.

TAB Gıda is also a listed company. Borsa Istanbul notices reported by the financial news site Paratic on 24 October 2023 set 26 October 2023 as the first trading day for TAB Gıda’s shares on the exchange’s Star Market, under the code TABGD, after a public offering the week before.

The arrangement shapes the brand. Usta Dönerci sits on the same group website as the global names TAB Gıda runs under licence, with the same restaurant-count panels and franchise pages. The word “usta” is shared with Usta Pideci, the pide brand the group launched in 2019. This guide makes no claim about who designed the Usta Dönerci mark.

For a design guide, Usta Dönerci shows how a franchise operator can build a home-grown brand with the systems of the global chains it runs. Compare Burger King, the chain TAB Gıda has operated in Türkiye since 1995, and HD İskender, another Turkish chain built around döner meat. For this guide we use an ember orange, a pepper green and a wheat tone with a condensed sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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