The Runner Brothers are back with another QSR play: Waffle Kong

Sri Lanka’s food scene is getting crowded. International chains are arriving, imported concepts are multiplying, and apparently a foreign passport is sometimes enough to make anything taste premium.

But while everyone is looking outside, the Runner Brothers are looking in.

After spending seven years building Crepe Runner from a humble food truck on Marine Drive into a home-grown QSR brand operating across Sri Lanka and multiple international markets, the team is back at the starting line with another idea — Waffle Kong.

This time, the bet is on waffles. Waffle Kong opens its first outlet at Fusion Food Court, Dehiwala on 11 September, bringing together sweet and savoury waffles on a stick, milk-based boba, lemonades, and milkshakes and locally manufactured soft serve ice cream, with prices starting from Rs. 250.

But behind the playful name, the Kong character and a menu built around cravings sits a more serious business idea.

The team wanted to build a QSR concept specifically for the realities of today’s market: smaller footprints, leaner operations, lower capital requirements, accessible pricing and a product that can move quickly across locations.

The hero became the waffle on a stick. Instead of treating waffles as a plated café product, Waffle Kong turns them into something handheld, quick and easy to eat, spanning both sweet and savoury flavours. The rest of the menu was then built around products that naturally complement it without making the operation unnecessarily complicated.

Much of that thinking comes from lessons learnt the hard way. Crepe Runner began in 2019 with an initial investment of Rs. 600,000 and a food truck. What followed was years of opening outlets, entering new markets, building supply chains, making mistakes, fixing them and learning what actually survives beyond a good-looking concept.

“We didn’t want to build another brand and then figure out how to scale it later. We wanted to think about scale before the first outlet even opened,” says Crepe Runner Founder and CEO Abdus Salaam. “Seven years of operating teaches you what matters and, perhaps more importantly, what doesn’t. Waffle Kong is us putting those lessons back onto a blank sheet of paper.”

That also explains why the team resisted simply importing an international concept and replicating it locally. From product development to sourcing and pricing, the intention has been to build as much of the model around local economics as possible, while retaining the experience customers expect from an international QSR brand.

There is a certain irony to that timing. As more overseas food brands make their way into Sri Lanka, Waffle Kong is being built with ambitions in the opposite direction. The first outlet may be in Dehiwala, but the business has been designed with a much larger footprint in mind.

The immediate plan is to roll out four to five locations through a combination of company-owned and franchised outlets, before pushing towards a longer-term target of 50 outlets.

For the team, however, the first outlet remains the real test. Because brands are not built by logos, launch campaigns or ambitious expansion maps. They are built when customers come once, enjoy the product, and decide it is worth coming back for.

So, for now, the spreadsheets can wait. The lights come on in Dehiwala on 11 September. The Runner Brothers are back in the kitchen. There is a Kong on the loose. And this time, he has waffles.