Innovation

Shalendra Singh

It’s lunchtime on a Tuesday at Hungry Lion in N1 City Mall in Cape Town, and there’s a queue out of the door. The small dining area is full, with a range of customers: mall cleaning staff, healthcare staff in medical scrubs, and smart office workers, all there for the fried chicken, burgers, and family-style meal buckets. This is one of 560 Hungry Lion stores across nine Sub-Saharan countries and the brand aims to expand this to 1 000 stores by 2029. The first Hungry Lion outlet opened in 1997 in Eikestad Mall in Stellenbosch.

Hungry Lion CTO Shalendra Singh tells me he has just returned from China, where he was buying some of the technology needed to open and run these new stores, such as touchscreens and POS systems. “We then ship everything in containers directly to the location where we're opening a new store,” he says. This approach allows for faster store rollouts. Standardised hardware also makes centralised management and remote support simpler, and ensures that the business provides a consistent customer experience.