On December 12, the Unirest company, owner of the Rostic chain, acquired 97 KFC restaurants operating in Russia, RBC writes, citing a source familiar with the deal. The restaurants were owned by one of the largest franchise chains in Russia, the company Hey Kay Russia, which has the right to use the brand until 2035.
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Unirest confirmed the information about the purchase, but declined to disclose the details and amount of the transaction. AK Russia CEO Alexey Chizhov told RBC that he has no intention of staying with the company after the sale of the business.
INFOLine-Analytics CEO Mikhail Burmistrov estimated AK Russia’s business at 4 to 4.5 billion rubles. The company’s revenue in 2023 amounted to 8.6 billion rubles, a decrease of 0.2% compared to last year, net profit increased to 107.4 million rubles, up from 7.6 million rubles in 2022, according to Rusprofile data.
97 AK Russia restaurants still operate under the KFC brand, but Unirest plans to rebrand and change its name to Rostic’s by spring 2025.
AK Russia previously stated that it had no plans to change the signs in the short term. According to analysts interviewed by Kommersant, changing the sign to Rostic could deprive AK Russia restaurants of 20% of traffic. Negotiations on the agreement, according to the newspaper’s sources, began at the end of January.
American holding Yum! Brands completed the sale of KFC’s Russian business to Smart Service in April 2023. As a result of the transaction, Smart Service became the owner of Unirest, the Russian legal entity of the corporation that owns the KFC master franchise. In May of the same year, the Polish holding company Amrest, which owned 215 KFC restaurants in Russia, sold them to Smart Service.
Author:
Mikhail Zelenin
Source: RB
I am a professional journalist and content creator with extensive experience writing for news websites. I currently work as an author at Gadget Onus, where I specialize in covering hot news topics. My written pieces have been published on some of the biggest media outlets around the world, including The Guardian and BBC News.
