Founded 1990 Number of locations 34 | Headquarters UK | |
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Key people Sam Chandrasinghe (founder) | ||
Sam's Chicken is a British fast food chain. Sam's Chicken was founded in 1990 with its first restaurant in Wealdstone, Harrow, Middlesex. The founder, Sri Lankan Sam Chandrasinghe, had previously worked for KFC UK as deputy operations director. It has 34 outlets, mostly in London.
In 2009, the Evening Standard reported that 62-year-old Sam Chandrasinghe said that his staff and shops had been targeted by Tamil youth as part of a hate campaign due to his Sinhalese background.
In 2012, England cricketers Ravi Bopara and Monty Panesar opened a new branch in Tooting. The branch is managed by Bopara's brother Etinder, and Ravi is believed to be an investor. Also in 2012, Sam Chandrasinghe had approached England cricketer Kevin Pietersen to become the owner of a branch. In 2014, it was reported that Bopara now owned two branches of Sam's Chicken, Tooting and East Ham:
"I remember when I was saying it when I was about 14 and I said to my mates that we're going to own a chicken shop one day because all we used to eat was chicken, so we wanted to sit and eat our own chicken without having to pay for it".
In 2012, The Guardian reported on how food hygiene inspectors found a small windowless bedroom behind the busy kitchen of a Sam's branch in east London, and that combined with imported chicken pieces enabled chicken shops to offer low prices to keep poor consumers happy, even if local councils were not.
In 2013, Sam's Chicken were fined £1750 by Ealing Council for fly-tipping of 35 rubbish sacks over seven nights, the shop owner have previously been fined in 2011.