US döner operators

Several US restaurants sell döner under German, Berlin or Turkish names. The Berlin sandwich — toasted pide, cabbage, garlic, a window on the street — is what Döner Haus, a US franchise, serves in New York and Los Angeles: six open shops, seven or more already in construction, 55 franchise commitments as of August 2026, none closed. The rest of the table is the neighborhood: another US franchise with UK waffle bread that has already closed US shops, a New York independent whose only restaurant has closed, Turkish döner in California, and shops farther out that put Berlin on the sign. Their menus disagree about bread, sauce and bowls. That disagreement is useful. It does not make every row the same food. Kotti is not a franchise. Döner Haus and GDK are. Doner Shack filed, signed a Texas facade, and then stopped selling.

Mustafa’s is a Berlin shop. US readers keep searching for it; it is not a US operator.

Public directories compared

Figures are what the sites showed in August 2026. Re-check before traveling.

What is a German döner? is the Berlin sandwich. Döner Haus is that sandwich in America, sold as a US franchise. DonerG is Turkish döner: a good grill, a different food. GDK is also a US franchise, UK origin, whose beef doner contains poultry and whose bread is a waffle loaf — and whose US map already includes closed shops. Kotti is an independent New York food-hall operator whose only restaurant has closed. The Salt Lake, Nashville and Illinois rows are shops that invoke Berlin.

The independents are the wider story

Three of the seven rows are single businesses, and they are the ones that show how the German reference actually reaches an American street.

Salt Lake City. Döner & Company reads, in August 2026, as a shop that refuses to translate itself. Its front page offers the Box, Bowl, Wrap or “the classic Im Brot sandwich — just like in Germany,” puts currywurst, wiener schnitzel and German potato salad beside the spit, and says it hopes to become the reader’s Lieblingsplatz. It also frames its own opening as the arrival of “the Berlin Döner” in the city, which is a positioning claim rather than a documented first.

Nashville. New Berlin Eats is the clearest US case of the four formats coexisting on one board: bread pocket, fry box, salad and yufka wrap, each with the same lettuce, tomato, onion and pickled red cabbage under Tzatziki Ranch and a Sweet Red Sauce, and each offered with shaved lamb or falafel. Its own account, read the same month, describes two brothers who grew up in a German-speaking household and fell for German kebab-shop culture only after moving abroad, starting the business with a third partner in 2021 — and it names Canadian influence alongside German and Turkish, which is why poutine sits under the same shaved meat. That is a genuine third tradition on the board, not a novelty item; see the döner box and kapsalon for the same fries-underneath logic arriving from other directions.

Suburban Illinois. Berliner Kebap, in Streamwood and Schaumburg, keeps the Berlin name while describing its own food as Middle-Eastern: bread or tortilla, roasted meat, vegetables and a yogurt-based sauce. It lists chicken, beef and pork, which puts it outside the halal framing several German-positioned US operators use, and its site makes ingredient claims — organic, non-GMO, no hormones or antibiotics — that are the operator’s own and would need checking at the counter. A shop can invoke Berlin and sell a pork spit; the name is a reference, not a specification.

None of these three is a chain thesis, and that is the point. A Berlin-named counter in Utah, Tennessee and Chicagoland is different evidence from a mall unit: it suggests the format travels with people who lived in Europe.

How the menus diverge

Bread. Quartered pide (Döner Haus), sesame waffle bread (GDK), unspecified pocket plus wrap (Kotti), pita and fladenbrot (DonerG), a house-made pocket and house-made lavash (New Berlin Eats), and “bread or tortilla” (Berliner Kebap). Döner & Company simply calls it warm bread and names the sandwich Im Brot. See bread and dürüm.

Vegetables. Red cabbage recurs on German-positioned US boards, and New Berlin Eats specifies it pickled on every item — a sharper reading of the same component. DonerG’s fladenbrot also lists pickles, parsley-onion, and fries in the bread — a different salad logic. Kotti emphasizes a “rainbow” of vegetables and feta. Salad, pickles and cabbage treats the whole question.

Meat claims. GDK’s UK allergen page states: “Our beef doner contains poultry for added juiciness.” Döner Haus’s public site describes its meats as filler-free, gluten-free and Zabiha halal. DonerG states halal-certified döner. As of the latest public owner reply, Kotti’s chicken is not certified halal. Berliner Kebap describes organic, non-GMO chicken, beef and pork. These are not interchangeable certificates, and none of them is a category fact. Meat and halal and allergens keep them apart.

Vegetarian. GDK USA lists a jalapeño black-bean Veggie Kebab in sesame bread. DonerG lists falafel, as do Döner & Company and New Berlin Eats, where falafel substitutes into every format rather than occupying one line. Kotti’s proteins should be read from the current menu rather than assumed. Berlin’s Vöner, on the city guide, is seitan — wheat — and is not a US chain.

Mustafa’s in Kreuzberg

Mustafa’s Gemüse Kebap is the to-go stand at Mehringdamm 33. Address, hours, the queue — on its own site. Famous, in Berlin, not a US restaurant.

Roasted vegetables and the word Gemüse still need a vegetarian check at any similarly named stand. See Berlin neighborhoods and vegetarian.

What the table leaves out

It does not add shop counts, sales, or “white space” in the US category. The commissioned chart on the homepage is one company’s thesis; German döner in the US already treats it as a point of view.

It does not merge gyro and shawarma businesses into the table. They are neighbors, described in the comparison chapter. Nor does it annex Mediterranean fast-casual chains that carve meat without claiming döner: The Kebab Shop, which calls itself “New School Mediterranean,” was advertising 55 locations from a San Diego start in August 2026, and the Houston menu on its ordering pages that month built wraps, bowls and plates on shawarma and skewer-grilled kebab, with fries under “carved protein” — the box shape, a different lineage, and not the word döner.

Independents are in the table where a first-party page could be read. Shops whose only web presence is a delivery listing or a social account are left out, and at least two US businesses that appeared to be Berlin-positioned were dropped from this pass because their own sites could not be reached in August 2026. Omission is not a claim that a shop does not exist, or that it is not good.

How to use the table

1. Open the operator’s current location page.
2. Open that location’s menu, not a national photograph.
3. Note bread, sauce, and whether the item is a sandwich, wrap, or bowl.
4. Ask halal and allergen questions as themselves.
5. Judge the spit and the vegetables when you are there.

Kotti’s menu is the document for its sauces, formats and drinks list; its location page is the document for its New York addresses, including the Dean Street restaurant it still prints after the listing went permanently closed. DonerG’s locations page is the document for California. GDK USA and Döner Haus likewise. For the independents there is usually one page carrying everything — the single Salt Lake City address and the format list sit together on Döner & Company’s home page, and New Berlin Eats publishes its board and its origin story on the same screen. Dated, first-party, replaceable when the operator updates them.

PIX 11, the New York Post, QSR Magazine and Time Out have covered Döner Haus as the shops have opened.

City-level pages: New York, Los Angeles, United Kingdom for GDK’s other public menu. The Explainer’s locator is where can I get German döner?.

Related chapters

• German döner in the US
• New York döner
• Los Angeles döner
• UK German döner