French broadcaster Canal+ has acquired Hoho Entertainment’s CG-animated series Shane the Chef (52 x 11 minutes, pictured) in a deal that stemmed from a Speed Pitching meeting at Kidscreen Summit last February.

Launching in France sometime next month, this preschool series revolves around a young girl, her restaurateur father and their adventures in food (e.g. building the world’s biggest baguette or heading out into the woods to find wild herbs for a special recipe).

Shane the Chef was originally commissioned by Channel 5 for its Milkshake block, where the show premiered in 2018—but global distributor Hoho Rights was on a mission to generate new buyer interest at Kidscreen Summit 2024.

“[It’s] not always easy to lock down time to meet with broadcasters, especially when they receive so many requests for meetings from people all over the world,” notes Hoho’s joint MD Helen Howells. “So [Kidscreen’s] Speed Pitching sessions are a great way to get in front of key commissioners and broadcast execs.”

Like Canal+, MTV Hungary also recently picked up Shane the Chef, although it hasn’t set a launch date yet. And YLE (Finland), RTV (Slovenia) and S4C (Wales) have already aired the series over the past five years.

To keep the IP’s reach growing, Hoho has also strategically leaned into YouTube—where a flagship Shane the Chef channel has racked up more than 9.5 million views and 20,000 subscribers. This English-language hub was geoblocked in the UK until last June, but now operates as a fully global channel.

“In a world where children’s content consumption habits are constantly changing, it’s important that we, as content creators and distributors, make sure that our stories are available on multiple platforms and in multiple formats,” Howells says, emphasizing a mixed approach that sometimes means building an audience in a localized YouTube-first way in certain markets. “In Germany, for example, we [went] digital first with a Shane der Koch channel; and so far, the results are proving to be really positive, with the channel growing month on month. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t or won’t work with a broadcast partner as well.” 

In order to attract more eyeballs to its YouTube channel, Hoho began producing live-action shorts in April 2024 featuring real-life kids and food-related tutorials, games and fun facts. This franchise extension recipe seems to be working—total views on the Shane the Chef channel were up by 464% in January 2025, according to Hoho’s internal data.

“We are now planning to produce longer-form live-action content for the channel, with a view to integrating some new animation into it,” Howells says, adding that Hoho is also interested in exploring partnerships to produce localized versions of these live-action clips.