French casual-dining group Flam’s will open its first Indian restaurant in Hyderabad’s Hitech City in November 2026, the opening move in a franchise plan that targets 50 restaurants across the country inside two years. The brand is working with Franchise India Group to recruit single-unit entrepreneurs alongside multi-unit and multi-brand operators in major cities — putting a format built in Strasbourg in 1990 into one of the fastest-moving organised foodservice markets in Asia Pacific.
The Hitech City site runs to 3,000 sq ft and is positioned as a relaxed, contemporary room for young adults, families and groups rather than a counter-service unit. That footprint matters for anyone modelling the opportunity: Flam’s is entering as a sit-down casual-dining brand with a shareable table format, not as a delivery-first or mall-kiosk concept. Hyderabad, rather than Delhi or Mumbai, is the chosen proving ground — a pattern other first-store entries into new markets have followed when the operator wants a controlled launch before a metro push.
Flam’s is built on flammekueche, also called tarte flambée — an ultra-thin Alsatian flatbread served on wooden boards and eaten communally. Founders Franck Riehm and Éric Senet opened the first restaurant in Strasbourg in 1990 and have since built a nationwide network across France. The brand is now using franchising to accelerate both domestic and international growth.
The commercially interesting detail is that franchise partners can adapt toppings and flavours to local preferences while the signature dish holds the brand’s identity. A single-format brand with a variable topping layer is far easier to localise than a multi-category menu — the same logic that has let European casual-dining formats travel into Asia Pacific and MENA without rebuilding the supply chain from scratch.
Franchise India Group is fronting the rollout, the same route taken by Segafredo Caffè’s India master franchise and Tony Macaroni’s India and UAE expansion. Chairman Gaurav Marya framed the entry around India’s appetite for European cuisine.
Its accessible, contemporary and social dining format has strong potential in India
Fifty restaurants in twenty-four months is an aggressive curve for a brand with no prior India footprint, and the structure tells you how it is meant to work: Flam’s is not appointing a single national master franchisee and waiting. It is seeding city-level operators through a development partner, which spreads capital across many balance sheets and buys speed at the cost of network consistency. Investors evaluating similar European entries should read the 50-store figure as a pipeline ambition rather than a committed build schedule — the Hyderabad unit’s trading performance will set the real pace.
The wider read is that India’s organised foodservice market is now deep enough to absorb single-dish European formats that would have been considered too narrow five years ago. For operators across India’s franchise entry routes and the Gulf, the lesson is that specificity is no longer a liability. A brand that does one thing precisely, with a localisable topping layer, can now carry a 50-unit plan. That is a materially different underwriting question from a broad-menu casual-dining brand, and it favours operators who can run tight kitchens rather than large ones.
Source: Franchise TV / Indian Retailer — Franchise TV Exclusive: French Casual-Dining Chain Flam’s Enters India with First Store in Hitech City, Hyderabad · Brand site: Flam’s
