Pick of the Month: Spur Corp
Unlike rival Famous Brands, Spur has been slow off the mark with brand diversification
Last year marked 50 years since Spur Corp founder Allen Ambor opened the first Spur restaurant, the Golden Spur in Newlands, Cape Town. It should have been a great year for the 613-store franchise group. Instead it turned into a nightmare. This began in March, with a confrontation between a white man and a black woman in Johannesburg’s Texamo Spur. It led to the man being banned from Spur restaurants, and unleashed an avalanche of anti-Spur rhetoric on social media. The fallout sent the Spur Steak Ranch division’s sales tumbling 14.9% in the last quarter of its year to June 2017, and a further 14% in the first quarter of its year to June 2018. Though the decline eased to 5.3% in the quarter to December 2017, half-year Spur restaurant sales were still down 9.3%, at R2.24bn. Many franchisees were hurt badly. At the height of the furore, 180 of 286 SA Spur restaurants were receiving support, says long-serving CEO Pierre van Tonder. Support for franchisees meant Spur’s franchise and oth...
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