Pizza Hut to expand

Pizza Hut, the world's largest restaurant chain, plans to open another 27 outlets in the country by 2005-end. The restaurant chain, which has been seeing over 40 per cent growth year-on-year, will see its number of outlets in the country reach 125. Last year Pizza Hut opened 28 outlets.

The slow, but sure acceptance of pizza as a snack has only helped the cause of Pizza Hut and their ilk. Pizza Hut, which claims to have given birth to the pizza market in India, wants to keep its numero uno status.

"We control over 50 per cent of the pizza market in the country," said Pankaj Batra, director-marketing, Indian subcontinent, Yum! Restaurants International. Yum owns the Pizza Hut chain along with KFC, Taco Bell and others.

Pizza Hut has 26 per cent of its restaurants in south India, but records over 30 per cent of the pan-India sales.

"Bangalore is now one of the three most important markets for the restaurant chain, along with New Delhi and Mumbai," said Batra. They are followed by Chennai, Pune and Hyderabad, he added.

Pricing which was considered to be on the higher side initially, has seen a fall with the scale of production allowing the chain to keep prices low. This has seen more and more Indians take to pizzas.

While in the US people see Pizza Hut as a convenience, Indians see a visit to Pizza Hut as an outing. This has seen Pizza Hut make all efforts to make a visit to its outlets a special and enjoyable experience, said Batra.

On the challenges faced by the chain, real estate is the biggest.

This is over and above the challenge of securing a licence and the supply chain management, said Batra.