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The Great Greek Mediterranean Grill is heading to the Caribbean. On June 2, 2026, the award-winning Mediterranean fast-casual franchise signed a master franchise agreement with Guyana’s Beharry Group to develop the brand across Guyana and seven additional Caribbean countries — its most ambitious international move to date.
The agreement gives an experienced, deep-pocketed regional conglomerate exclusive rights to introduce the concept across eight markets, a textbook example of how U.S. franchisors are using the master-franchise structure to scale internationally without deploying their own capital.
The master franchise covers Guyana plus seven Caribbean nations: Antigua, the Bahamas, Barbados, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago. Development begins with a flagship restaurant in Georgetown, Guyana’s capital and largest city, expected to open later in 2026.
From there, the Beharry Group plans to build additional company-operated units and recruit sub-franchisees to populate the remaining seven territories — the classic master-franchise cascade.
The Beharry Group is an 80-year-old Guyanese conglomerate with more than 4,000 employees and interests spanning banking, manufacturing, insurance and quick-service restaurants. Crucially, it is already a seasoned restaurant operator: chairman Suresh Beharry runs a portfolio of 12 KFC and 10 Pizza Hut outlets — both Yum! Brands concepts — with six more units in development. The Great Greek marks the group’s first venture into fast casual.
“We saw an opportunity to diversify our portfolio with a fast casual brand.” — Suresh Beharry
Master franchising lets a brand enter a new country through a single, well-capitalized partner who already understands local real estate, labor and supply chains. For The Great Greek, partnering with an established multi-unit operator de-risks entry into markets where it has no prior presence and accelerates the path to scale.
The choice of a proven QSR franchisee is telling. Operators who already run KFC and Pizza Hut bring disciplined systems, trained management and banking relationships — advantages that matter far more than enthusiasm when a brand crosses borders into the wider global foodservice market.
The deal is a reminder that Mediterranean cuisine has become a genuinely global franchise category, not a regional niche. As brands chase white space, conglomerates in emerging markets — from the Caribbean to Southeast Asia and the Gulf — are positioning themselves as the gatekeepers of entry.
For master-franchise investors in Asia and MENA, the Beharry partnership is a useful template: a diversified operator using an established QSR base to add a higher-margin, better-for-you concept. The same logic — pairing a hungry consumer base with an operator that already has scale and capital — is exactly what is driving cross-border franchise demand across the world’s fastest-growing regions.
