American better-burger chain MOOYAH Burgers, Fries & Shakes has handed the United Arab Emirates to a first-time international operator. The Plano, Texas brand confirmed on 13 August 2026 that it has signed a master franchise licence agreement with Great USA Foods LLC, a partnership between Nizar Shalwani and Roma Subazali, covering the whole UAE market. First restaurants are earmarked for Dubai and Abu Dhabi, with a wider rollout to follow over subsequent years.
The structure matters more than the headline. This is a country-level master franchise, not a single-unit licence and not an area development agreement stapled to one emirate. Great USA Foods takes the development obligation, the sub-franchising rights and the supply-chain responsibility for an entire sovereign market — the same architecture VF sees across most successful American-brand entries into the Gulf. Investors weighing the difference between these structures can compare them in our guide to master franchise, area development and single-unit ownership.
Shalwani is not a passive capital allocator. He operated five Golden Chick restaurants in Texas between 2008 and 2024, meaning MOOYAH has awarded an entire country to an operator who has already run a multi-unit American QSR estate inside the brand’s home market. That is a deliberate profile choice, and an increasingly common one: franchisors entering the Gulf now favour partners who have proven they can execute the US operating model before asking them to translate it.
The brand offers exceptional products we look forward to sharing with new markets.
MOOYAH cited the UAE’s consumer appetite for fresh-ingredient burgers, hand-cut fries and hand-spun shakes, plus the emirates’ unusually high tourist density and per-visitor spend. That second factor is the one dealmakers underweight. A Dubai restaurant is not serving a resident catchment alone; it is serving a rotating international population with existing brand familiarity, which compresses the awareness-building phase that normally slows a foreign entry.
The pattern is consistent across the region this year. Chipotle opened its first Saudi Arabian restaurant in Riyadh with Alshaya Group, while homegrown concepts such as Mimo Cafe in Dubai continue to scale alongside the imports. The Gulf is absorbing both directions of traffic at once.
MOOYAH currently runs roughly 80 units across the United States and the Middle East. That is a mid-sized system, and it changes how the UAE deal should be read. A brand of this scale cannot fund a company-owned international build-out; the master franchise route is the only realistic path to international presence. For the master franchisee, the trade-off is a brand with genuine US credibility but limited regional infrastructure — meaning more of the localisation burden, and more of the upside, sits with the partner.
Three things are worth extracting. First, mid-cap American brands are now genuinely reachable — a 200-unit system is no longer the entry threshold for securing country rights, and the negotiating position of a well-capitalised regional operator against an 80-unit franchisor is materially stronger than against a mature global system. Second, the operator-first selection bias is hardening: franchisors are trading territory for demonstrated multi-unit competence, which favours groups that already run someone else’s brand well. Third, the UAE remains the default proving ground before Saudi Arabia and the wider Gulf, exactly as Southeast Asia treats Singapore.
The same logic is playing out across Asia Pacific, where American fast-casual concepts such as Jaggers are being packaged for regional master partners, and where American franchises continue to find willing operators in Japan. For family offices and multi-unit groups tracking the Gulf, the MOOYAH deal is a useful data point on where the pricing power currently sits.
Source: Franchising.com — MOOYAH Drives International Growth in UAE With Great USA Foods LLC
