Winning the conversation does not always mean winning the sale in South Africa’s fast food race

Key findings for fast-food and QSR marketers:

• Online mentions of South Africa’s fast-food and quick-service restaurant (QSR) sector increased by 16%, with 6% more people joining the conversation between May 2025 and April 2026.
  
• Nearly 22 million South Africans identify chicken as their primary QSR choice, reinforcing its dominance across conversation, search and consumption.
  
• Chicken Licken overtook KFC as South Africa’s most-mentioned fast-food brand online, but accounted for just 2% of organic search visibility, compared with KFC’s combined 14%.
  
• Pedros recorded a 68% jump in online mentions and more than doubled its self-reported customer base, from 1.1 million in 2023 to 2.5 million in 2025.
  
• Delivery platforms Uber Eats and Mr D together account for approximately 14% of category search visibility, underscoring the growing role of third-party discovery.
  
• Beef mince prices rose 23.8% year-on-year by April 2026, nearly six times general consumer inflation, adding to the cost pressures reshaping the category.
  
• The number of South Africans reporting no fast-food purchases in the previous four weeks increased from 3 million in 2023 to 5.5 million in 2025, signalling more selective spending.

Chicken Licken has overtaken KFC as South Africa's most-talked-about fast-food brand online. Yet KFC remains the country's most-searched-for brand and reaches roughly twice as many consumers when it comes to actual purchases. That gap between conversation, search and consumption lies at the heart of Rogerwilco's 2026 Fast Food and QSR Report, now in its second year, developed in partnership with YouKnow Technologies and Eighty20.

“Consumers may talk about one brand on social media and online, search for a different one and then buy another brand completely,” said Mongezi Mtati, senior brand strategist at Rogerwilco, during an online webinar to unveil the findings. “As affordability pressures persist and choice expands, South Africans are assessing flavour alongside portion size and value rather than price or brand loyalty alone.”

Online mentions of the fast-food sector rose 16% between May 2025 and April 2026, driven largely by chicken brands, now the primary QSR choice for nearly 22 million South Africans, thanks to a combination of familiarity, affordability, convenience and shareability few other categories can match.

Chicken Licken’s rise was echoed by Hungry Lion, whose online mentions grew 54% year-on-year to break into the top five most-discussed fast-food brands. Search and purchase data, however, tell a different story. KFC captured a combined 14% of organic search visibility across its ordering and location domains, against Chicken Licken's 2%, with McDonald's a further 12%. That gap carries through to actual purchasing: approximately 21% of South Africans bought from KFC in the past four weeks, compared with roughly 10% from Chicken Licken.

"It's an interesting disconnect; it perfectly illustrates the difference between what people are talking about and what gets them actually buying,” noted Shaun Pearson, product owner of Social Tech at YouKnow Technologies. “Chicken Licken absolutely dominates the online timeline, but a significant portion of that conversation is people discussing the product itself, things like salt content. That kind of conversation keeps a brand top of mind, but it also puts it under the microscope. Attention isn't always applause, sometimes it's active scrutiny."

Not all conversations carry that same scrutiny. Pedros recorded a 68% increase in online mentions, the strongest growth of any fast-food brand analysed, by tapping into the humour and cultural relevance that made Nando's a household name, while still delivering on value. Its self-reported customer base more than doubled, from 1.1 million in 2023 to 2.5 million in 2025. The findings suggest that scale and heritage remain important but no longer guarantee momentum, with consumers increasingly willing to explore alternatives when another brand offers stronger value, convenience or relevance.

Consumers are also searching with more precision than ever: for family meals, specials and individual menu items rather than brand names alone, a sign that value has become a decision filter, not simply a pricing strategy. South Africans are not necessarily hunting for the cheapest meal, but for the one that feels most worthwhile.

Another key finding is that discovery is fragmenting. Uber Eats and Mr D together currently account for approximately 14% of category search visibility, while social media, review platforms and AI-generated recommendations increasingly shape decisions before consumers reach a brand-owned channel.

These shifts are playing out against continued pressure on household budgets. Beef mince prices rose 23.8% year-on-year by April 2026, due mainly to foot-and-mouth disease outbreaks, nearly six times general consumer inflation. At the same time, the number of South Africans reporting no fast-food purchase in the previous four weeks rose from 3 million in 2023 to 5.5 million in 2025. Even so, consumers have not abandoned the category altogether. Many are simply becoming more selective about when they spend and more willing to switch brands, or even protein categories, in pursuit of better value.

"A brand is beyond one tweet, and it's beyond one data point too. What the data is certainly showing is that frequency is down. What isn't down is ticket price, and while that might be inflation-driven, particularly with beef, it does show people are being more considered about how often they go to a fast-food outlet," said Andrew Fulton, director at Eighty20.

The report identifies three priorities for fast-food and QSR marketers: combining search, social and consumer data to distinguish attention from purchase intent, making value and availability easy to identify across every discovery platform and tailoring strategies to consumer occasions, household realities and regional differences.

"The brands that will lead this market are not necessarily those generating the most noise," says Mtati. "They are the ones that consistently earn trust and stay genuinely relevant to the lives of the people they serve. As discovery fragments across delivery apps, social platforms and AI-generated recommendations, the brands that show up credibly wherever decisions are made will be the ones that turn attention into growth."

The full 2026 Fast Food and QSR Report is available for download here.