In December 2008, Johan Lourens of Cistech Services and Hennie Steijn of Cistech signed a groundbreaking contract with Food Concepts and Entertainment, of Nigeria, to supply them with Cistech's Serious About Retail software suite.
The suite will manage their retail operations from a strategic corporate level all the way through counter sales in company-owned as well as franchised retail outlets. This is envisaged as a long-term partnership, which will provide Food Concepts with the necessary software systems to assist in achieving their goal of becoming a leading pan African franchise.
Food Concepts is a leading (top 5) food retail business in Nigeria. With the goal of growing to become a pan African franchise, they remain focused on two principal areas of business:
* Chicken and chicken products (QSR)
* Bread and bakery products
Food Concepts brands
Chicken Republic is its flagship brand. It was launched in 2005 and is currently the fastest growing chicken franchise in West Africa. In 2007, it sold over 6 million pieces of chicken from its 17 stores in Nigeria.
A major milestone in Chicken Republic's history was also attained in December 2007 when it opened its first offshore outlet in Sunnyside, Pretoria, South Africa. This brought it one step closer to the goal of making Chicken Republic one of the best-known chicken brands in Africa.
As of May 2008, it also has a total of nine Butterfield bakeries spread across Nigeria and from which it currently produces an average of 70 000 loaves per day. Butterfield bread is now widely accepted in Nigeria and is available for sale in major cities like Lagos, Ibadan, Abeokuta, Sagamu, Ijebu-Ode, Benin, Warri, Port Harcourt and Ilorin.
The deal consists of licences for all current and future stores as well as the head office management, procurement and accounting divisions. The power of Serious About Retail's multisite technology is used to retrieve and consolidate stock sales and customer information from all branches to head office. Centrally managed purchase information is distributed to branches for local processing. The technology and architecture used throughout gives Food Concepts the ability to manage its stores effectively and provides easy scalability in keeping with Food Concepts' expansionist goals, despite communication and connectivity challenges faced by all African operations.
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