Pizza Hut to double store count in 5 years: Unnat Varma
Pizza Hut to double store count in 5 years: Unnat Varma

With 400 stores operational in India, Pizza Hut has plans set to double the store count within next 5 years, revealed Unnat Varma, Managing Director - Pizza Hut (India Subcontinent), during a conversation with Retailer media. Varma emphasized on the brand’s strategy on franchising setups and creating un-matched consumer experience.

How do you analyse franchising as an effective strategy for your brand?

Franchising per say, there is a massive opportunity and across industries, a lot of global companies enter local countries on the back of fantastic franchise partnerships. As far as food is concerned, our experience, particularly in India, has been that the corporate franchising setup works best for our requirements. So unlike some other categories and brands, in our case, less number of franchises, very well capitalized and capable to set up operations or 100 stores or multiple of hundreds is the kind of setup that works best for us.

Pizza hut has been in the Indian market for almost 20 years. How has been the journey from first store to 400 stores?

It has been very exciting journey for us. India has been one of the most exciting markets in the world ever since India opened up and that journey started in early 2000 when India started to open up thus leading to a surge in consumerism. It has been a fantastic run and we are thankful to our customers who have made us the most trusted food service brand, not for one year, but 11 years in a row.

We have been the number one food service brand in terms of trust that gives us the foundation for explosive growth and we have plans of not just growing our current business which is the restaurant part of the business but also actively getting into new spaces like home delivery.

What strategies have been roped at Pizza Hut to drive great consumer experience?

Our experiences are both in the online digital space as well as in the offline space. The real experience can be delivered in the offline space when customers walk into the stores and that’s when the brand comes to life. So we are an iconic brand when it comes to giving very different customer experience right from the standard welcome and showing them the way to the table, but making them feel special.

We are the first brand to engage with consumers by way of signature writings on the bills – our servers write down personal experiences they have had with the customers on bills. If one has great experience, they can ring the bell. We have strong experiences for kids, birthday events, andf we have been doing this for a very long time. This is what makes us truly iconic along with our ability to replicate this in 150 stores.

What new can we expect from Pizza Hut in near future?

One can expect a lot of action on food innovation, where we have been very active and will continue to do that. We are also going to be actively looking at addressing newer changing consumer needs. One would spot more presence of Pizza hut at places like airports and metro stations along with aggressive expansion happening at this pace. We are currently about 400 stores in India and more than 450 stores in Indian sub-continent.  We are looking to double this in next 5 years. 

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