Hungry Bunny

No More Bunny

Hungry Bunny is a popular burger franchise that used to be open back in Kuwait during the 80s pre Burger King and McDonalds days. When Al Homaizi got the Burger King franchise, they shutdown all the Hungry Bunny locations and killed the brand. But the original creator of Hungry Bunny ended up launching the brand in Saudi Arabia and then a few years ago brought the brand back to Kuwait. Al Homaizi Group sued them and it now seems Hungry Bunny has been told to stop using the bunny logo until a verdict is reached in the court case. I passed by Hungry Bunny for a quick bite yesterday and the majority of the items had the Hungry Bunny logo without the bunny (like in the placemats pictured above). But, some items like the burger wrapper still had the bunny on them. According to the shop manager this is just a temporary issue and the bunny will be coming back soon. They’ve even removed the bunny from the shop signage as well so it’s a pretty awkward mess right now. Update: Al Homaizi have commented with the following: Dear Mark and Loyal Hungry Bunny Customers, It is great to see Hungry Bunny still having that nostalgic feeling within Kuwait and we thank you for your post which we appreciate and are proud of as the founders of the Hungry Bunny brand. With regards to your post, we would like to mention that Hungry Bunny was developed in 1982 by Al Homaizi Foodstuff Co. in Kuwait and is 100% Kuwaiti. As the first local franchise in Kuwait, Hungry Bunny led the way and opened the doors to decades of innovative local concepts within Kuwait which we are very proud to see are still growing today. The Hungry Bunny restaurants that launched in and outside of Kuwait following 1997 were not the original Hungry Bunny developed by Al Homaizi Foodstuff Co. We would also like to take this opportunity to thank all of our loyal Hungry Bunny customers! We would love to hear more about your experiences and memories that you, your family and your friends had in the 80’s and 90’s at the much-loved Hungry Bunny. Please share your memories with us by sending us an email to HungryBunny@koutfood.com Best Wishes, Al Homaizi Foodstuff Co. Member of Kout Food Group, Kuwait

Saudi Arabia · 31 Jan 2015

Hungry Bunny Story

Hungry Bunny is a local creation that opened up in the early 80s in Kuwait. It was inspired by a Australian franchise called Hungry Jack which was what Burger King was called in Australia back then. In 1997 Al Homaizi Foodstuff Co. who owned Hungry Bunny got the rights to Burger King. Since they couldn’t have two competing franchises they decided to close down all the Hungry Bunnys and open up Burger Kings in the same locations. Since then there have been copycats the most popular being “Hungry Bunny World” and “Super Bunny” which was named after the famous Hungry Bunny burger. Hungry Bunny World actually opened up a branch on the 4th Ring Road back in 2005 and called it just “Hungry Bunny”. This led to a lot of speculation and rumors that Hungry Bunny was relaunching but they weren’t true. Al Homaizi sued (or threatened to sue) so they added the word “World” on their signage. I heard awhile back from a friend that Al Homaizi was actually thinking of relaunching Hungry Bunny but I don’t know if thats true or not. For now the only way you can enjoy Hungry Bunny is to drive down to Saudi Arabia where the franchise still exists there. Here is the link to their website: www.hungry-bunny.com note: the above information is based on my knowledge. If there are any mistakes in dates or events I will fix them but as far as I know the above is accurate. update: A reader by the name of HaMooR wrote the following: Dear Mark, Al Homaizi has the BK franchize since the first hungry bunny openned in Kuwait. and I believe it was Kaifan branch, in order for Al Homaizi to sake BK prudects at that time in kuwait. they have to change the name of BK, because BK was consider in the taboo list (boycott Isreal). There was a big sign in kaifan branch that says all the meat prudects are BK. So when BK was removed from the list back in 97 .. and there is no reason to for them to hide the name, they switched to BK.

Kuwait · 25 Feb 2007