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Accelerating a Great Australian Family Story

One of Australia’s premium charcoal chicken brands, El Jannah, today announced a  bold national expansion strategy to quadruple its number of restaurants from 50 to  almost 200 in the coming years. 

From a humble charcoal chicken shop opened by Lebanese migrant couple Andre and  Carole Estephan in Western Sydney in 1998, El Jannah has quickly developed into an  Australian cultural institution. 

Serving charcoal-grilled chicken platters with family hospitality and warmth, El Jannah  has built a loyal and growing base of customers across Australia, with a reputation for  serving fresh, high-quality and affordable food. 

Since 2020, El Jannah has grown its number of restaurants from five to 50, with 160,000  transactions occuring every week across Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Wollongong  and the Southern Highlands. 

Mr Estephan said his dream was for millions of Australians to be able to enjoy El  Jannah’s unique Middle Eastern chicken offering for the first time. 

“From the day Carole and I opened our first restaurant in Granville, our dream was  simple — to share the flavours and hospitality we grew up with in Lebanon,” he said. 

“We built El Jannah with our family for Australian families. We now want to carry that  dream into its next generation, while keeping our culture, values and identity exactly  where they belong — at the heart of the business. 

“Our dream is to offer our customers more locations and more convenience, allowing  more people to discover the brand Australians already love. We want to share our authentic flavours and recipes, our renowned service reflecting Lebanese warmth and  our cultural soul that has defined us from the beginning.” 

As part of its next growth chapter, El Jannah intends to open more than 25 restaurants in  the following locations in the next 12 months: 

• NSW – Cranebrook, Cronulla, Emerald Hills, Maroubra, North Rocks, Ropes  Crossing, Rozelle, Rutherford (Hunter Valley), Sydney CBD and Warringah Mall.
• Victoria – Armstrong Creek, Ashburton, Box Hill, Carrum Downs, Corio,  Cranbourne East, Cranbourne West, Hawthorn, Ivanhoe, Lilydale, Roxburgh  Park, South Yarra, Sunbury, Wollert and Wyndam Vale. 
• ACT – Woden. 

The brand’s future growth is being made possible because of a significant investment  from General Atlantic, a leading global investor.  

Founded in 1980, General Atlantic specialises in partnering with innovative businesses  around the world. General Atlantic has a strong track record of supporting founders and  management teams to accelerate growth, including through domestic and international  expansion and development of digital capabilities. 

General Atlantic has invested in a range of high-growth food and beverage companies  globally, including Joe & The Juice, as well as distinguished Australian brand  Zimmermann. 

El Jannah CEO Brett Houldin will continue to lead the business, supported by the  Estephan family and General Atlantic. 

Mr Houldin said the company’s signature charcoal chicken, its unmistakable garlic  sauce, and the warmth of Lebanese family hospitality were part of its soul and DNA  created by the Estephans. 

“Our partnership with GA means we can explore selective international expansion for  the first time, including the possibility of exporting our unique Australian-Middle Eastern  flavour profile back to the Middle East, and into other high-potential markets,” he said. 

“That will be the ultimate proof of the Australian migrant success story. We are  committed to preserving the soul of the brand the Estephan family built, while  accelerating our next phase of growth. With General Atlantic beside us, we are  positioned to grow our Australian footprint, deepen our digital and guest experience  capability, and explore selective international opportunities.” 

Neal Kok, Managing Director and Head of Southeast Asia & Australia at General Atlantic, said: “El Jannah is one of the most distinctive and exciting restaurant offerings we have  seen in Australia. Its combination of authentic food and amazing community following  are core to what has made it an incredible success. We are privileged to support the business in its next leg of expansion and proud to partner with Brett and the Estephan  family as they bring El Jannah to more communities across Australia and, in time,  internationally.” 

Media enquiries: 

El Jannah  

Adam Connolly, Apollo Communications, +61 (0)417 710 084 

General Atlantic 

Jess Gill [email protected]
Scott Schuberg [email protected]
Jonathan Buxeda [email protected] 

About El Jannah 

El Jannah is a family-owned Lebanese-Australian restaurant brand renowned for its  legendary charcoal chicken and famous garlic sauce. Founded in 1998 in Granville,  Sydney, by Andre and Carole Estephan, the business has grown from a humble  neighbourhood eatery in western Sydney into one of Australia’s most beloved restaurant  brands. Today, El Jannah is celebrated for its Lebanese hospitality with generous  portions, fresh ingredients, and commitment to bringing people together over authentic,  shareable food. With 50 locations expanding across the country, El Jannah continues to  uphold its family values and heritage while delivering a unique dining experience to  generations of loyal fans. 

About General Atlantic 

General Atlantic is a leading global investor with more than four and a half decades of  experience providing capital and strategic support for over 830 companies throughout  its history. Established in 1980, General Atlantic continues to be a dedicated partner to  visionary founders and investors seeking to build dynamic businesses and create long term value. Guided by the conviction that entrepreneurs can be incredible agents of  transformational change, the firm combines a collaborative global approach, sector specific expertise, a long-term investment horizon, and a deep understanding of growth  drivers to partner with and scale innovative businesses around the world. The firm  leverages its patient capital, operational expertise, and global platform to support a  diversified investment platform spanning Growth Equity, Credit, Climate, and  Sustainable Infrastructure strategies. General Atlantic manages approximately $118 billion in assets under management, inclusive of all strategies, as of September 30,  2025, with more than 900 professionals in 20 countries across five regions. For more  information on General Atlantic, please visit: www.generalatlantic.com.

Space may soon find itself populated with data centers from Earth and at the forefront of this achievement may be Google. “Obviously, it’s a moonshot,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai said on the “Google AI: Release Notes” podcast this week.

Pichai acknowledged that the notion seems “crazy” today, but “when you truly step back and envision the amount of compute we’re going to need, it starts making sense and it’s a matter of time.”

A data center is a specialized facility that houses computer systems, storage devices, and networking equipment used to store, process, and manage digital data. It contains servers, storage systems, routers, switches, and security devices, all supported by reliable power supplies and cooling systems to ensure continuous operation. 

Data centers power cloud services, websites, streaming platforms, enterprise IT operations, and big data analytics, making them the backbone of modern digital infrastructure. They can be owned by a single company (enterprise), rented out as colocation space, or operated by cloud providers like Amazon, Google, or Microsoft. 

READ: US tech firms hesitant to lease large data centers in India (October 6, 2025)

Essentially, data centers are the physical “engine rooms” of the internet, enabling organizations and individuals to access and process data reliably and at scale.

Pichai was referring to “Project Suncatcher,” a new long-term research bet that Google announced in November. “Maybe we’ll meet a Tesla Roadster,” he quipped.

Other tech giants have also chimed in on this with Tesla CEO Elon Musk writing in an X post, “Starship should be able to deliver around 300 GW per year of solar-powered AI satellites to orbit, maybe 500 GW. The ‘per year’ part is what makes this such a big deal.”

“I do guess that a lot of the world gets covered in data centers over time,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told comedian and podcaster Theo Von in a July interview. “But I don’t know, because maybe we put them in space. Like maybe we build a big Dyson sphere on the solar system and say, ‘Hey, it actually makes no sense to put these on Earth.’”

“The lowest cost place for data centers is space,” Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff wrote in a post on X earlier this month, referring to a video clip of Musk touting the benefits of orbital AI at the U.S.-Saudi Investment Forum earlier this month.

READ: GMI Cloud to build AI data center in Taiwan for $500 million with Nvidia chips (November 17, 2025)

“The sun only receives roughly one, two billionth of the sun’s energy,” Musk said at the event. “So, if you want to have something that is, say, a million times more energy than Earth could possibly produce, you must go into space. This is where it’s kind of handy to have a space company.”

The discussions by tech leaders suggest that the future of computing and data centers could extend far beyond Earth, reflecting both the increasing demand for computational power and the creative approaches companies are exploring to meet it. Concepts such as orbital or lunar data centers, solar-powered AI satellites, and even megastructures like Dyson spheres illustrate how space may become a frontier for innovation in digital infrastructure, though their feasibility remains highly speculative. 

While these ideas may seem ambitious or speculative today, they highlight the pressures driving technological advancement on Earth and the lengths companies are willing to explore for scalable, low-cost, and energy-efficient solutions. At the same time, this vision underscores the continuing importance of conventional data centers, which remain the backbone of current cloud services, enterprise computing, and digital operations. Whether on Earth or in space, the timeline, scale, and practical impact of such space-based data centers remain uncertain.