Remember Tantalizers? It is hard not to recall the early 2000s, when Tantalizers and Mr Biggs dominated Nigeria’s fast-food scene.

While it was not exactly a two-horse race, these two were undeniably the industry’s heavyweights.

The local quick-service restaurant famous for its meat pies, jollof rice, and sausage rolls was a household name.

But fast forward to 2025, and Tantalizers Plc is no longer just talking lunch. It is talking seafood, Nollywood, and global exports. The company now calls itself a “foodtainment conglomerate,” a bold mix of food, entertainment, and fisheries.

So far, the market seems to like the sound of it. The company’s share price gained a staggering 310% in 2024, and while it has cooled off slightly, it still boasts a total shareholders’ return year-to-date return of 92.14% as of May 19, 2025.

But here is the twist: you probably cannot buy in.

Despite the huge returns, Tantalizers has no shares available for public trading, what the stock market calls free float.

This can ruffle feathers when it comes to market transparency and governance.

Right now, the stock is trading at:

Those are the kind of numbers you would expect from fast-growing tech startups, not a quick-service restaurant chain trying to reinvent itself.

Yet, investors cannot seem to get enough of it.

Tantalizers is currently the 10th most traded stock on the Nigerian Exchange over the past three months (Feb 13 – May 19, 2025).

During that period, nearly 899 million shares changed hands across 7,871 deals, valued at N2.28 billion. On average, about 14.3 million shares were traded daily, showing intense market activity for a company with no free float, meaning there are essentially no shares freely available for the public to buy or sell.

On May 9, trading volume hit a high of 101 million shares in a single session. For comparison, the lowest daily volume during the same period was just 343,488 shares on February 24.

To be fair, Tantalizers is making moves; big ones.

These initiatives are part of what the company’s Dutch Group Managing Director, Rob Speijer, calls a drive to become a “Nigerian multinational,” a conglomerate blending food, fisheries, and entertainment.

This is all very different from the Tantalizers of the old. Founded in 1997, the company grew rapidly in the early 2000s, opening dozens of outlets and listing on the Nigerian Stock Exchange in 2008.

Back then, it represented a new era in Nigerian fast food — local brands with ambitions to rival global chains. But competition from international players like KFC, Domino’s, and Chicken Republic crowded the space. Poor execution, economic downturns, and inconsistent service quality took a toll.

Tantalizers fell off the radar. The stores thinned out. The profits evaporated.

It was not until a revamped strategy and recapitalization in 2024, which saw 1.8 billion shares issued via private placement, that the turnaround began.

The company now seems to be in full rebranding mode, even if the fundamentals have yet to catch up with the narrative.

The idea of a Nigerian “foodtainment” conglomerate is interesting even exciting. But it also raises questions: Will the market get access to this supposed success story?

Until Tantalizers opens its shareholder base, the current share price feels more like a number on paper than a reflection of real investor sentiment.

High-growth stories are great, but growth without governance, access, or liquidity? That is a puzzle investors should treat with caution.