Long John Silver’s just ended its Franchisee Association Conference a few weeks ago, one held for the franchisees and partners of the brand. What was different this time round was that for the first time ever, among the usual tables of delegates, there was an “international table” consisting of multiple new international franchisees, and a full table occupied by master franchise owners of the brand from Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. Even though it was just a single table this year, it was a testament and a culmination of the efforts by the brand to continuously refresh, revamp and grow the brand internally within the US as well as internationally, and a commitment from Long John Silver’s to continue to work towards international expansion across the globe.
Founded in 1969, LJS operated within the US until 1983 when the brand expanded into Singapore. Since then, the brand mainly operated in the two countries for almost 4 decades. Then in 2019 LJS’s new management, as part of their effort to refresh the brand, decided to include renewed international expansion into their new growth plan.
Indonesia, was the first country to sign the master franchise in 2021, leading the way for this new plan. However, that plan had to be delayed a few years due to COVID-19. In May of 2023, with COVID-19 out of the way, Indonesia opened its first outlet and the expansion plan was in place once again. In September and November of 2023, LJS signed two Master Franchise agreements with Thailand and Malaysia respectively, bringing LJS’s presence from 2 countries in 2022 to 5 by 2024.
Overall, 2023 has been a good year for LJS. Not to be outdone by the good news on the international front, the domestic market in the US continues to deliver stellar results. This is recently shown when two of their newest rebuilt stores in Flint, MI and Temple, TX achieved record sales, including the highest volume week ever achieved by an LJS outlet. This once again shows that under the stewardship of the new management and owner, the brand is slowly but surely righting its ship.
