The Hindu Business Line : For a larger slice of the action

A magician claims to be able to read your mind and guess who your favourite actor is even as a whole-wheat pizza is delivered to your table. The area you are sitting in doubles up as an aerobics floor in the mornings, and a room to the left is equipp ed with a stage and mikes for music shows. In a corner, some brightly embroidered bags and cushion covers are sold off a counter, and a couple of mehendi artists are available to decorate customers’ hands if the latter so wish.

All this interactivity takes place at US Pizza’s flagship restaurant at Ahmedabad, which will be the model henceforth for all its big restaurants in the country’s metros. The Bangalore-based company, which is set for a big expansion estimated to cost at least Rs 500 crore over three years, intends to open 25 flagship outlets in the metros this year and enter more Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities all over the country. It envisages having a total of 1,000 outlets operating by 2011; right now, it has 58 outlets across 26 cities. About 51 per cent of the turnover comes from Gujarat. Smaller cities and towns such as Valsad, Vapi, Navsari, Bellary and Gulbarga account for 38 per cent. The branded pizza market is estimated at Rs 150 crore and US Pizza claims a market share of 15-20 per cent, though no formal figures are available.

The brand was founded by a food technologist Vahid Berenjian in Sweden. US Pizza was so named to differentiate it from the locally popular Italian hand-tossed pizza which, after World War II, was adapted to assembly line-style production as the Pan Pizza.

Despite its Swedish origins, it is “an Indian-grown company, and understands the local tastes,” declares Akbar Khwaja, Managing Director, at a press conference in Rajkot for mediapersons on a familiarisation trip. Not only does that understanding extend to totally vegetarian outlets in Gujarat, it also endeavours to provide “healthy fast food”, says Khwaja, pointing to the greenish-brown wholewheat crust of the pizza, which is made from dough mixed with spinach. He also claims that R & D has allowed them to pare the fat in the cheese by 30-35 per cent, and it’s initiatives and improvements such as these that will make their products relevant at all times.

A US Pizza outlet

The company set up shop in India in 1995 much ahead of other pizza and multinational fast food chains but could not scale up rapidly due to lack of capital. Recently, however, Nirmal Kotecha of Kotecha Capital acquired a 49 per cent stake in the United Pizza Restaurants, the holding company, and as part of the expansion, it is launching two other brands.

One is a sandwich brand called ToastyZ, which will open its first outlet in the first week of May in Hyderabad. The other, yet unnamed, is an Indian fast food brand which will get off the ground in about two months.

“In India, fast food is fragmented by nature. It could be a vada pao in one region, a kathi roll in another, kachodi elsewhere … Our fast food will be packable, edible on the go, and non-messy, and in the Indian context, that would mean samosa, kachodi, the rather forgotten stuffed paratha, vada pao and the like,” explains Akbar, adding that most of the outlets would be takeaway counters rather than dine-in.

ToastyZ outlets would take the form of small cafes that serve coffee, tea, drinks and sandwiches made of multigrain breads and baguettes. Here too, the endeavour would be to provide healthy and nutritive options. Holding company United Pizza Restaurants also plans to export ready-to-eat Indian fast food products, mainly vegetarian and non-vegetarian kathi rolls, and pizzas to Europe, targeting the European consumer.

US Pizza aims to build a master franchise network in various regions of the country, as it has done with Royal Eatery for the Saurashtra region of Gujarat. At the press conference, Royal Eatery promoter Mandhatasinh Jadeja of Rajkot’s erstwhile royal family and Akbar signed a memorandum of understanding to open 14 outlets in Saurashtra other than Rajkot. Jadeja, who is also restoring and developing heritage properties for tourists in the region, states he may even set up US Pizza outlets in these hotels.

Akbar says US Pizza is seeking such large partnerships Statewise all over the country. It has finalised one such deal in Kerala. It will own its flagship outlets, though.

While it does not foresee entering the capital market or diluting its equity further, it will look at tie-ups in the near future with large real estate owners such as HPCL which will enable it to open restaurants on their properties.

Of the 1,000 outlets it hopes to have up and running in the next three years, takeaway and express counters will account for 40-45 per cent while dine-in will form 20 per cent. However, dine-in and delivery will account for the highest value share.