Business
US pizza chain Domino’s bites its teeth on Italy
The American pizza chain Domino’s has not been granted long survival in the motherland of the cult dish. The group has left Italy and closed the last of 29 branches after seven years, according to the financial news agency Bloomberg.
The Americans originally had big plans and wanted to open 880 restaurants. Large loans were also taken out for this purpose. But the Italians preferred their own version of pizza to those from the United States.
The chain came to Italy in 2015 through a franchise agreement with ePizza SpA. She wanted to offer a nationwide delivery service and stand out from Italian offers – with pizza toppings that are unusual for Italy but popular in the USA, such as pineapple, which is hotly debated among pizza gourmets.
In the pandemic, the chain defaulted on payments and went under a protective shield from creditors. Traditional pizza bakers had expanded their deliveries, pizzerias entered into contracts with third-party providers such as Deliveroo Plc, Just Eat Takeaway.com NV or Glovo to bring their margheritas, diavolas, sicilianas and co. to customers’ homes.
“We attribute the problem to significantly increased competition in the grocery delivery market,” the company told investors in 2021, according to Bloomberg. According to the latest audited annual reports, the company had debts of 10.6 million euros at the end of 2020.
Nevertheless, it came as a surprise to some Italian customers that the US pizza maker bit his teeth in Italy. They reached out to the chain on Italian social media channels, asking why their calls and orders weren’t going through or why their local shop was no longer open.
Domino’s is listed, was founded in the 1960s and claims to have around 17,000 branches in over 90 countries worldwide.
(SDA)