Americana Restaurants now operates five Peet’s Coffee outlets across the Middle East | Photo credit: Peet’s Coffee

UAE-based multi-brand restaurant operator Americana Restaurants has opened two Peet’s Coffee outlets in Riyadh, marking the specialty coffee chain’s debut in Saudi Arabia. 
 

Americana Restaurants said the stores in the Al Munsiyah and Sheikh Jaber districts of Riyadh are in the soft-launch phase. 

The multi-brand restaurant operator signed a franchise agreement with Peet’s Coffee in August 2022 and launched the specialty coffee chain in the Middle East with a store in the UAE in January 2023.  

The group now operates five Peet’s Coffee outlets, having also opened two new stores in Dubai in July 2023.  

Peet’s Coffee, which operates within JAB Holding-managed JDE Peet’s, operates more than 380 stores across the US, China, the UAE and Saudi Arabia. 

The specialty coffee chain is part of Americana Restaurants’ growing focus on coffee brands. The group operates more than 300 Krispy Kreme outlets in the MENA region alongside 70 Costa Coffee stores across Egypt, Kazakhstan and Jordan. 

With 968, 400 and 341 licensed outlets respectively, fast food brands KFC, Hardee’s and Pizza Hut were the main drivers of American Restaurants’ $1.24bn revenues in the first six months of 2023. Alongside 8% year-on-year total sales growth, the restaurant group also posted a 19% increase in profit to $144.8m. 

Although only contributing 4% of total sales during the period at $49m, Krispy Kreme achieved the highest year-on-year sales growth of Americana Restaurant’s core brands, at 13.4%. KFC was the largest contributor with $768m in sales, followed by Hardee’s with $207m. 
 

Americana Restaurants completed its dual listing on the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange (ADX) and Saudi Exchange in December 2022.