GeoAnalitikAyam gepuk opens where young, Malay-majority neighbourhoods meet fast food
We mapped the 263 ayam gepuk outlets we could find and compared the 2 km around each one with the 1,113 KFC, McDonald’s and Marrybrown outlets in the same states. Six findings set the category apart, and the same comparison points to where it could open next.
What sets ayam gepuk apart
- It is a Klang Valley product.
55% of outlets are in Selangor, Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya, against 36% of fast food. Johor and Penang are under-served, and Sarawak has none.
- It follows fast food on population and income, not on age.
Residents and district income around an outlet match fast-food sites in the same state. The neighbourhoods are younger and more Malay: 30.7% of adult citizens are aged 18–29, against 26.8% around fast food, and 56% are Malay, against 40%.
- It is a shophouse business.
6 of 263 outlets (2%) are in a mall or a retail block, against at least 14% of fast food. Pak Gembus, the largest chain, has none among 109.
- The chains crowd each other.108/40/15118/00/06
89 of the 237 outlets of the four chains have a rival chain within 1 km. In Bukit Jelutong and Setiawangsa, a Top Global and a Pak Gembus are 47 m apart.
- Students line up with reviews more than with location.
Within a chain, outlets with more private-college students nearby collect 27% more Google reviews per standard deviation. Reviews stand in for sales here, and students may simply write more of them.
More Google reviews per outlet for each standard step up in the factor, within the same chain. Only factors with a significant effect are shown.
- Where an outlet sits moves its ingredient cost by RM1.94 a plate.024/19/04171/16/04
Priced from the shops and markets near each outlet, one plate’s ingredients cost RM6.99 at Kubang Kerian and RM8.93 in Kota Kinabalu. Chicken thigh near the outlet explains most of the gap, and the state less than half of it. No chain has settled in cheaper places.
Ingredient cost of one plate: a quarter-chicken thigh piece, sambal, rice, tofu and tempe, at KPDN PriceCatcher shelf prices for the week of 21 September 2026 (recipe and national cost from manamurah). Shelf prices, not what a chain pays wholesale.
Where it could open next
We ranked 375 KFC, McDonald’s and Marrybrown sites that have no ayam gepuk outlet within 3 km by how closely their 2 km catchment resembles an existing outlet’s. These are the five closest matches.
Figure 1. The 263 existing outlets (lime) and the 20 best-matching candidate sites (red). A reference such as 130/20/03 (parliamentary seat, state seat, polling district) outlines that district on the map.
Lookalike is how close the site’s catchment is to its best-matching outlet: 80 means a closer match than 80% of outlets have with their nearest peer. Fit is the site’s place on the study’s model, as a percentile of existing outlets; it is n/a where the state has fewer than 10 outlets. A high lookalike far from any outlet says the neighbourhood resembles an outlet’s, not that the market is proven.
What a study for your chain adds
- Your outlets’ sales as the target: sites are ranked by what your best outlets have in common, not by resemblance to all of them.
- Drive-time catchments in place of 2 km circles.
- A cannibalisation check for every shortlisted site against your own network.
Commission a study for your chain.Clients sign in to read the full technical study behind this summary: every figure, the model and the method, plus all 375 candidate sites with their dossiers.