How Food Concepts built Africa’s most advanced restaurant technology stack

When Food Concepts operated 46 outlets across Nigeria in 2018, few could have predicted the transformation. Today, under MD/CEO Kofi Abunu, that number exceeds 300, spanning multiple brands, including Chicken Republic, PieXpress, and The Chop Box.

But the real story isn’t just about growth. It’s about the invisible infrastructure that makes that growth possible.

Most African quick-service restaurants hit a wall somewhere between 50 and 100 outlets. The systems that worked for a handful of locations begin to buckle. Inventory disappears into black holes. Financial reports take weeks to compile. Store managers make decisions based on gut feeling rather than data.

The choice is between either slowing down expansion or risking operational collapse.

Food Concepts chose a third path. The company invested heavily in enterprise technology rarely seen in African restaurants, implementing SAP SuccessFactors, Oracle ERP, and automated supply chain systems across its entire network. It’s the kind of infrastructure you’d expect from a multinational corporation, not a homegrown Nigerian restaurant chain.

Kofi Abunu, MD/CEO, Food Concepts

“When we crossed about 25 outlets, enterprise systems stopped being optional,” Abunu explains. “Up to that point, spreadsheets, standalone POS reports, and heroic manual interventions could still hold things together. Beyond that scale, complexity compounds faster than headcount or experience.”

Read also: Glovo becomes Chicken Republic’s “key” platform for online orders

The turning point came when Food Concepts realised they were fighting fires instead of building a business. Store managers in Lagos were unable to share insights with teams in Port Harcourt. Procurement decisions relied on historical averages rather than real demand patterns.

Financial close cycles stretched across weeks. The company was growing, but the operational foundation was cracking.

Food Concepts uses restaurant technology as a competitive advantage

The transformation didn’t happen overnight. Food Concepts initially deployed Oracle ERP before migrating to SAP Business ByDesign and SuccessFactors. The systems now handle everything from centralised hiring and onboarding to real-time profit and loss visibility across every outlet, region, and brand.

Supply chain platforms automatically trigger replenishment orders based on actual sales velocity rather than guesswork.

The impact shows up in hard numbers. Inventory losses dropped between 25 and 36 per cent, depending on the region. Stock-outs fell by more than 38 per cent. Finance and procurement teams doubled their productivity. New outlets ramp up significantly faster because standardised systems eliminate the learning curve.

“Decision-making moved from reactive to predictive,” Abunu says. “We shifted from store-by-store firefighting to network-level optimisation. Financial close cycles dropped from weeks to days. At 300 outlets, you simply cannot run the business by feel. Enterprise systems became the backbone that allowed leadership to focus on strategy rather than reconciliation.”

Consider a specific problem that would have derailed expansion. Before implementing integrated systems, inventory planning was chaotic. Some outlets overstocked slow-moving items, while others ran out of core ingredients during peak periods.

Procurement teams ordered based on historical averages, creating a permanent mismatch between supply and demand. Food Concepts estimated this approach would become unsustainable beyond 150 outlets.

The solution required connecting point-of-sale data directly to inventory and procurement systems. Reorder points now trigger automatically based on real sales patterns rather than manual estimates. Vendor management and pricing controls flow through centralised platforms.

The company materially reduced working capital locked in inventory, eliminated emergency purchases at premium prices, and delivered better quality to customers.

The technology also catches problems before they metastasise.

Real-time stock variance alerts flag outlets where inventory consumption deviates from expected norms. When the system detects an anomaly, teams investigate shrinkage, wastage, or theft immediately rather than discovering losses weeks later during audits.

At Food Concepts’ scale, manual management would conservatively cost hundreds of millions of naira annually in wastage, emergency sourcing, and lost sales.

Enterprise technology implementations carry obvious risks. They’re expensive. They disrupt operations during deployment. They require retraining of entire organisations.

Food Concepts built its business case around three pillars: risk mitigation through reduced leakage and operational blind spots, scalability that enables growth without linear increases in overhead, and speed to market for opening new outlets faster with fewer errors.

The return on investment appeared within 18 to 24 months through lower operating costs, faster financial closes, reduced supply chain inefficiencies, and the ability to scale without bloating head office teams. But some returns proved defensive rather than additive, avoiding losses that would otherwise compound at scale.

Abunu views this infrastructure as a genuine competitive moat in West Africa’s quick-service restaurant space. While some peers are investing in technology, very few operate at Food Concepts’ level of integration and discipline.

The advantage isn’t simply owning sophisticated software. It’s embedding that software into decision-making culture, training leaders to trust data over instinct, and continuously optimising processes around the systems. That creates a structural barrier that’s difficult and time-consuming for competitors to replicate, especially for fast-growing restaurants operating under margin pressure.

For African restaurant chains eyeing regional expansion, Abunu offers pragmatic guidance. Bootstrap intelligently up to 30 or 50 outlets using lighter tools, but design processes with eventual scale in mind. Start planning enterprise systems between 50 and 70 outlets, even if full deployment waits.

By 100 outlets, homegrown solutions stop working because risk, complexity, and cost of failure climb too high.

Food Concepts now operates with a technology backbone that would be recognisable at multinational corporations but remains rare among African restaurant operators. The infrastructure doesn’t just support growth. It enables expansion that would otherwise be impossible, turning operational complexity from a constraint into a competitive advantage.

In emerging markets where most quick-service restaurants struggle to maintain consistency beyond 50 locations, Food Concepts has built something different: a scalable enterprise that grows stronger rather than more fragile as it adds outlets.

The real story isn’t about software. It’s about what becomes possible when African companies make the same infrastructure investments as their global counterparts and then execute with the same discipline and ambition.

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