Shakey’s Philippines buys Peri-Peri Charcoal Chicken chain

MANILA, Philippines — Po family-led Shakey’s Pizza Asia Ventures Inc., one of the country’s leading restaurant operators, has acquired Peri-Peri Charcoal Chicken, a homegrown fast casual and full service restaurant brand.

Under the asset purchase Agreement signed on Tuesday, Shakey’s will purchase the assets and intellectual property relating to the Peri business, including its brand, trade name, and the various proprietary recipes used by the chain to make its trademark peri-peri chicken.

The deal is expected to close mid-year, upon fulfillment of conditions customary to this kind of transaction.

The acquisition will also involve owning and operating all company-owned Peri stores, as well as serving as brand-owner and franchisor of stores being operated by franchisees. Currently, Peri has a store network of 23 units in various parts of Metro Manila, around 60 percent of which are franchised and 40 percent company-owned.

“This Peri acquisition is another vote of confidence in the growing middle class in the Philippines. We will continue to invest in the restaurant space and diversify the business portfolio in the hope of achieving our vision of establishing wow brands – a handful of industry leading, full service the restaurant chains appealing to the Filipinos’ increasing need for affordable yet premium dining out options,” Shakey’s chair Christopher Po said in a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange on Tuesday.

“We are excited by the potential of Peri to scale. We expect it to be an important future growth driver for our fast casual chain restaurant business. Our deep insights into how to best serve the typical fast casual restaurant guest should allow us to further grow the Peri brand. This is in addition to leveraging our team’s execution capabilities, which remain best-in-class, and our restaurant operating systems, which have also continued to improve over the last few years,” Po added.

The term ‘peri-peri’ was derived from an African bird’s eye chili called ‘piri-piri’, which releases a fiery spice and helps create a wealth of flavors in every dish.

Peri has incorporated piri-piri in chicken and a variety of sauces. Its mainstay is charcoal-grilled chicken, marinated for 24 hours, served with an assortment of unique sauces to choose from.

“Peri’s founder has done a great job bringing this creative concept to life – blending in a local Philippine twist with piri-piri’s Portuguese origins. The brand now has a strong following and recently gained even more traction – evident in its strong same store sales growth last year amidst the more challenging macro environment, and the amount of interest in new stores from potential lessors and franchisees,” said Shakey’s president and CEO Vicente Gregorio.

“We look forward to growing this business through our tried and tested formula of investing in the brand, investing in the people, and investing in the stores. We will maintain the taste and look that made Peri famous, but hope to further elevate the customer experience with Shakey’s trademark ‘wow-ing’ service and improve the stores’ accessibility via proper site selection and expansion of network,” he added.

Since inception, Shakey’s noted that Peri business had demonstrated consistent profitability, brand strength, and robust growth in both system wide sales and store count.

Shakey’s, the Philippines’ largest casual dining restaurant, has a nationwide store count of 228 as of end-2018. It expects to end this year with 248 Shakey’s outlets locally – a total of 20 net new stores lined up for 2019.