Wienerwald (restaurant)

Wienerwald Franchise GmbH
	180px
Type	GmbH
Founded	1955 in Munich, Germany
Headquarters	Schwabing
Key people	Daniel Peitzner (CEO)
Services	Fast-food (Hendl, Schnitzel) restaurants franchising
Website	Wienerwald

Wienerwald restaurant in Nuremberg, Germany

Wienerwald Franchise GmbH is a franchise chain of fast-food restaurants with stores in Germany, Austria, Turkey, Egypt, and Romania specialised in Hendl, Schnitzel, and also other chicken products.

History

Founded in 1955 by Linzer restaurateur Friedrich Jahn (1923 - 1998) in Munich, it rapidly grew up to Europe's largest chain of fast-food restaurants with more than 1600 restaurants in 1978. By 1978, Wienerwald purchased the 273-restaurant Lum's chain from former Kentucky Fried Chicken owner John Y. Brown, Jr..^[1] The chain's inability to market themselves as a provider of good tasting chicken (rather than overcoming the US misconception that "Wienerwald" was a wiener chain), plus their huge growth in 1978 brought enormous debts. Many of the restaurants in the USA and Europe were forced to close; Wienerwald declared bankruptcy in 1982, divesting itself of its 880 restaurants in the United States.^[2]

Since 2007

In 2007, Friedrich Jahn's daughters Margot Steinberg and Evelyn Peitzner purchased the company and Wienerwald started a new era.^[3] In June 2009, the first Wienerwald in Turkey was opened in Istanbul. The first Romanian restaurant in Bucharest was opened in April 2011. As of 2012^[update] there were 30 restaurants in Germany (15 in Bavaria)^[4] compared to 19 restaurants in Turkey (Istanbul, Ankara, Bursa, and Antalya),^[5] three restaurants in Romania (Bucharest)^[6] and three restaurants in Egypt (Cairo).^[7]