Shakey’s acquires Peri-Peri

Po family-led Shakey’s Pizza Asia Ventures Inc. has transformed itself into a multi-brand dining business operator with a deal to acquire homegrown restaurant brand Peri-Peri Charcoal Chicken.

Under the asset purchase agreement signed on Tuesday, Shakey’s will buy 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 also involves owning and operating all company-owned Peri stores, as well as serving as brand-owner and franchisor of stores being operated by franchisees.

During its stockholders’ meeting last year, Shakey’s amended its charter to allow the acquisition of other dining outlets beyond flagship pizza parlor chain Shakey’s.

While the company can grow organically with just the Shakey’s brand, adding 18 to 20 new stores every year, the acquisition of other brands will allow it to grab a bigger slice of the local food retailing business alongside improving consumer affluence.

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

Peri, a fast casual and full service restaurant chain, has a store network of 23 units in various parts of Metro Manila. Around 60 percent of these 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 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.

“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.

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.

It owns the perpetual rights to the Shakey’s brand for the Middle East, Asia (excluding Japan and Malaysia), China, Australia, and Oceania.