The man who built South Africa’s largest fried chicken takeaway restaurant chain

George Sombonos is the man behind Chicken Licken, the world’s most successful non-American-owned fried chicken franchise.

Sombonos had food in his blood. He was the son of a Greek immigrant restaurant owner who came to South Africa during the Second World War.

His father owned the Dairy Den restaurant in Ridgeway, Johannesburg, where Sombonos learned about the trade.

The idea for Chicken Licken had its origins in the early seventies, when Sombonos visited the United States.

“My father was very strict. However, once a year, he would throw an airline ticket at you at the dinner table and say, ‘Go to America’,” he said.

During his visits to the United States, he would walk down a street and eat a specific type of food for the whole day.

“One day, I would eat around twenty pieces of chicken from different restaurants. The next day, I would eat twelve hamburgers from different outlets,” he explained.

“I could not afford a car, so I walked down the street from one food shop to the next. There were no girls or anything else. It was just food,” said Sombonos.

He was so fanatical about gathering valuable information about food and restaurants in the United States that he once landed in trouble.

“In one restaurant, I sat there for two hours nursing a coffee. They called the police as they thought I was planning a robbery,” he said.

Sombonos repeated the same exercise, visiting the United States and sampling food, for three years before he struck gold.

In 1972, he visited a restaurant in Waco, Texas, and found excellent fried chicken. “I ate the chicken, and it was fantastic. I returned the next day, and it was the same,” he said.

Sombonos showed the owner his South African passport and asked if he would sell the recipe. “No, it was my grandmother’s recipe,” he said.

Sombonos would not give up. He took the owner for dinner and ensured that the wine flowed throughout the evening.

“At the end of the evening, the restaurant owner told me to come and see him in the morning,” he explained.

The next day, the owner agreed to sell the recipe for $5,000. “I did not have close to $5,000. I only had $1,000,” he said.

The $1,000 exchanged hands, and the restaurant owner gave him the recipe. However, Sombonos wasn’t sure it was the actual recipe.

After he returned to South Africa, he mixed the spices in his bedroom and secretly replaced the Dairy Den restaurant chicken spices with his own.

Dairy Den’s fried chicken sales started to increase, and customers commented on the improvement in the taste of the chicken.

His father did not know what changed and correctly assumed that his son, George Sombonos, was behind it.

Since then, they have used the new recipe Sombonos bought from the restaurant in Waco, Texas, for $1,000.

George Sombonos starts Chicken Licken

Sombonos expanded Dairy Den’s operations, including serving customers in their cars outside the restaurant and launching a drive-through.

After his father died in 1980, he decided to open his own restaurant on the site of the Dairy Den in Johannesburg.

His first choice for his new restaurant name was Golden Fried Chicken. However, it was too descriptive to be registered as a trademarked brand.

One of the waiters suggested calling the new restaurant Chicken Licken, based on the name of a nursery book. “He brought me the book, and I gave him R300 as a thank you,” he said.

A graphic artist created the head of a chicken as a logo, for which Sombonos paid R75. “For R375, we had a name and a logo.

In 1981, he opened the first Chicken Licken restaurant and its fried chicken with the trusted recipe was an instant hit.

Chicken Licken was so successful that Sombonos sold two franchises in Soweto and Alexandra the following year.

This growth scared Kentucky Fried Chicken, now known as KFC, which had launched operations in South Africa a decade earlier.

Kentucky Fried Chicken launched legal action against Chicken Licken, arguing that its name resembles its payoff line, ‘It’s finger-lickin’ good’.

He told Leader that the trademark lawyers said if he wanted to fight to keep the name, it would cost R10,000 to fight KFC.

“I borrowed the money from my mother, finished my shift and drove to Pretoria with the R10,000 in a Chicken Licken packet,” he said.

“The receptionist was there alone as the bosses had gone for the day. Uneasy about entrusting her with the money, I told her I had 10 pieces of chicken for them, and I left.”

The next morning, I phoned to enquire if they got the money. They started running around, literally, like headless chickens,” he laughed.

The good news is that Sombonos won the case against Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Chicken Licken kept its name.

Chicken Licken shows strong growth

Chicken Licken gained tremendous traction in South African townships in the eighties thanks to its franchise model.

Sombonos told Leader that he initially gave away the franchises in Soweto and Alexandra to spur on growth.

The success enabled him to start selling franchises in 1985 for R3,000, which included equipment and stock worth R15,000.

“I didn’t charge royalties for the first four months. As a result, I didn’t make much money,” he said. “However, we were expanding, and by then, we had 21 stores.”

After the democratic elections in 1994, the change in demographics allowed Chicken Licken to launch in higher income areas and upmarket shopping malls.

By 2007, Chicken Licken was ranked second after KFC in the Fast Food and Restaurant Chains category of the Sunday Times Markinor 2007 Top Brands Survey.

In 2013, Chicken Licken had 259 outlets, 247 in South Africa and 12 in Botswana, and sold more than 400,000 chickens and five million hot wings a month.

Sombonos died in November 2016 following a battle with cancer. Chicken Licken said it ‘stood in awe of his legacy’.

“We will remember his dedication, ingenuity and respect, not only as our CEO, but that of a family man of great integrity,” the company said.

“It was a privilege being led by a man of George’s stature. His business acumen was second to none.”

“He was a tastemaker, a trendsetter, and a pioneer who stood for what was right when everybody around him went the path of least resistance.”

Sombonos’ daughter, Chantal Sombonos-Van Tonder, has taken over the Chicken Licken business as managing director and chief marketer.

Chicken Licken photos