Saudi Fast Food Giant AlBaik Expands to Pakistan: What Was Announced, What Has Happened and What to Expect

Why Pakistanis care about a chicken shop

Ask almost any Pakistani who has performed Hajj or Umrah what they ate, and the answer is likely to include AlBaik.

The chain’s restaurants ring the holy cities. Its meals are cheap, filling and quick. For pilgrims on a budget, far from home, a box of fried chicken with garlic sauce and a bun became part of the journey. Families brought boxes back on the plane.

So when news came that AlBaik would open in Pakistan, it was not received as an ordinary business announcement. It spread across social media within hours.

For most food chains, arriving in a new country means building a reputation. AlBaik arrives in Pakistan with one already made, by millions of pilgrims over thirty years.

The company in brief

Two things stand out. The company grew very slowly. For more than forty years it refused to leave western Saudi Arabia, and Riyadh’s residents famously drove hundreds of kilometres for it. And it remains family-run, now by the founder’s sons.

That caution is part of the answer to the question every Pakistani fan asks: why is it taking so long?

What was announced

October 2024: the memorandum

During a visit to Islamabad by a large Saudi business delegation in October 2024, dozens of agreements were signed. One was a memorandum of understanding between AlBaik and Gas & Oil Pakistan, known as GO, a fuel retailer with hundreds of petrol stations.

The wording, as reported, was careful. The two companies would explore a strategic partnership to set up and operate AlBaik restaurants in Pakistan.

The partner

GO is a natural choice for one reason. Earlier in 2024 Saudi Aramco, the kingdom’s state oil company, had bought 40 per cent of it. AlBaik already runs outlets at fuel stations in Saudi Arabia. The plan, according to the chain’s chief executive, was to do the same in Pakistan, opening at GO’s stations as well as in stand-alone restaurants.

What followed

Why it takes so long

There is no public explanation from the company for the delay. But the steps any such chain must complete are well known, and each takes months.

1. The chicken

AlBaik’s reputation rests on consistency. In Saudi Arabia it is supplied by its own sister company from a very large processing plant. In a new country it must either find local suppliers who can meet its standards for size, feed and slaughter, or build its own. Pakistan has a big poultry industry, but supplying a chain to an exact specification, every day, is a different business from supplying markets.

2. The supply chain

Sauces, breading, buns, packaging, cold storage and refrigerated lorries. Everything that reaches the counter must arrive on time in a country where power cuts and blocked roads are part of life.

3. Kitchens and staff

Pressure fryers must be imported. Kitchens must be built to the company’s plans. Managers must be trained, usually abroad, for months.

4. Paperwork

Company registration, food authority licences in each province, trademark protection, import permits and, for a foreign investor, permission to send profits home.

5. Price

This may be the hardest. AlBaik is loved because it is cheap. Pakistani incomes are a fraction of Saudi ones, and the rupee has lost much of its value. A meal priced to make a profit in Karachi may not feel like AlBaik to a customer who remembers what it cost in Makkah.

Chains that have faced this problem elsewhere have had three choices: smaller portions, cheaper local ingredients, or a menu rewritten for local tastes and pockets. Each risks the thing the brand is selling, which is the memory of a particular meal. A company as protective of its recipe as this one is likely to take its time over that decision, and it may explain more of the delay than any licence or lorry.

6. The neighbourhood

Between the announcement and now, the wider region went to war. Shipping through the Gulf was disrupted for much of 2026, and fuel prices and inflation in Pakistan rose. That is not a helpful moment to launch a chain that depends on imported equipment.

The market it would enter

Pakistan’s fast-food trade is large, young and crowded.

Two features of the market are worth knowing.

Fried chicken is already the favourite. “Broast” has been a staple of Karachi since the 1970s. AlBaik would not be introducing a new taste. It would be competing on a familiar one.

Some Western brands have had a difficult time. Since late 2023 a consumer boycott linked to the war in Gaza has hurt sales at several American-branded chains, and in 2025 mobs attacked a number of outlets. Local chains have gained. A Saudi brand with religious associations would enter with goodwill that few foreign names enjoy.

Real or imitation?

This is the most practical part of the story.

For years, restaurants in Pakistani cities have traded under names and logos very close to AlBaik’s, with the same red and yellow colours and a similar cartoon chicken. They have no connection with the Saudi company. Some sell perfectly good food. They are not AlBaik.

When the real chain announced its plans, these shops multiplied, and some claimed online to be the official launch.

What AlBaik actually sells

For readers who have not been on pilgrimage, the fuss can be puzzling. The menu is short.

• Chicken meals. Pieces of chicken on the bone, pressure-fried in a seasoned coating, served with chips, a bun and a small tub of garlic sauce. This is the dish the chain is known for.
• Boneless options. Nuggets and chicken fillet sandwiches.
• Seafood. Fried fish and shrimp, which outsell chicken in some coastal branches.
• A vegetarian sandwich of falafel.
• The sauces. The garlic sauce in particular has a following of its own.

Three things set it apart from its rivals, according to those who have studied the company.

1. Price. In Saudi Arabia a full chicken meal costs a good deal less than at the American chains.
2. Speed. The branches near the holy sites are designed to serve enormous crowds in minutes.
3. Sameness. The chain has always preferred to open slowly so that every branch tastes like every other.

Whether those three things survive the move to Pakistan is the real question. A meal that is cheap in riyals is not automatically cheap in rupees, and the recipe depends on ingredients the company controls closely at home.

How earlier launches went

AlBaik’s record abroad is short, and it gives some idea of what to expect.

The pattern is consistent. A first branch in a prestigious, high-traffic spot. Heavy early demand. Then a slow, deliberate spread. All of these markets are small, rich and close to home. Pakistan is none of those things. It would be the company’s first market outside the Arabian Peninsula, its largest by population and by far its poorest.

What an opening would mean for local business

A chain of this size does not arrive alone. It pulls other businesses along and pushes some aside.

Who would gain.

• Poultry farmers and processors able to meet its standards, who would get a large and steady buyer.
• The fuel retailer, whose stations would draw customers who come for food and stay for petrol.
• Young workers. Each branch needs dozens of staff, most of them in their first formal job.
• Makers of packaging, cold storage and refrigerated transport.

Who would feel the pressure.

• Local fried chicken chains, which would face a competitor with a famous name at a similar price.
• Neighbourhood broast shops near the new branches, though most serve customers who would never pay chain prices.
• Look-alike shops, which could expect letters from lawyers.

Who would be unaffected. The great majority of Pakistanis, who eat at home or from street stalls, and for whom a branded fried chicken meal of any kind is an occasional treat.

Why the government talks about it

Ministers have mentioned a chicken restaurant in speeches about foreign investment. That may seem odd. There are reasons.

• It is visible. A power plant deal means little to most people. A queue outside a famous restaurant is proof that investors are coming.
• It is Saudi. Pakistan has courted Gulf investment hard since 2023, through a special council that brings ministers and generals together. Saudi pledges ran to billions of dollars in 2024. Few had produced anything a citizen could see.
• It creates ordinary jobs. Each restaurant employs dozens of young people, and the supply chain behind it, from poultry farms to lorry drivers, employs more.

Critics reply that a fast-food chain earns no export income, and that the investment Pakistan needs is in factories and farms that do.

The wider Saudi picture

The AlBaik agreement was one of dozens signed in the same week in October 2024. It helps to see it in that company.

• A Saudi business delegation of more than a hundred people visited Islamabad. Memoranda worth about two billion dollars were announced, a figure later raised.
• They covered farming, mining, energy, information technology, construction and food.
• Earlier in 2024 the Saudi state oil company had bought into a Pakistani fuel retailer, its first step into the country’s petrol stations.
• Saudi investors have shown interest in the large copper and gold project in Balochistan.
• Saudi Arabia has also kept several billion dollars on deposit at Pakistan’s central bank and supplied oil on deferred payment, support that mattered a great deal during the crisis of 2023.
• In September 2025 the two countries signed a mutual defence agreement, the most significant step in their relationship for decades.

Against that background, a restaurant chain is a small item. Its value to both governments is that it is the one item on the list an ordinary person can picture.

It is also a fair test of the larger claim. If a well-run Saudi company with a ready-made following cannot open a chicken shop in Karachi in two years, that says something about how hard it is to do business in Pakistan. If it opens and thrives, that says something too.

How franchising works

Readers often ask whether they could open an AlBaik themselves. It helps to understand the models.

AlBaik has historically preferred to keep tight control, and the Pakistani memorandum spoke of a partnership with a single company. Nothing published suggests that individual franchises are on offer to the public.

Words used in this article

What to watch next

• A date and an address from the company itself.
• Hiring notices for restaurant managers in Karachi, Lahore or Islamabad.
• Announcements by GO about food outlets at its stations.
• Trademark cases against look-alike shops, which often come just before a launch.

For how investment decisions are made in government, read our guide to Pakistan’s politics.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• Arab News, “Saudi food chain AlBaik set for Pakistan debut after MoU signing with local energy firm” — October 2024.
• Associated Press of Pakistan, “Al Baik, GO ink strategic partnership to bring Saudi expertise to Pakistan” — October 2024.
• Aaj English, “When is Saudi Arabia’s famous food chain Al Baik’s coming to Pakistan?” — 2024.
• Geo News, “Saudi Arabia’s Al Baik set to launch in Pakistan, confirms information minister” — 2024.
• Business Recorder, “AlBaik confirms expansion into Pakistan, MoC says process in final stages” — 2025.
• Dawn Images, report on AlBaik’s Pakistan plans
• Wikipedia, “Albaik” — read; last edited 25 August 2026.
• AlBaik, official website — for any announcement of an opening.