Comments
Even as politicians fight it out over the beef issue, India’s largest pizza delivery chain has spread out a fully vegetarian menu across 164, out of its existing 921 restaurants in 209 cities in the country, this Navratri, from October 13 to 21, 2015.
Noida-based Jubilant FoodWorks Ltd (JFL), which holds the master franchise for Domino’s Pizza and Dunkin’ Donuts brands in India, has selected most of these restaurants in Gujarat and Maharashtra for a 100% vegetarian menu customised for the occasion.
As part of this industry-first initiative by any pizza chain, these 164 restaurants will serve fully vegetarian menu. Customers can dine-in at these restaurants or place an order for the 100% vegetarian menu over the phone.
“We expect a 5-10% growth in these restaurants. If we get a good response, we may continue to offer veg-only menu there even after Navratri,” Ajay Kaul, CEO, Jubilant Foodworks, told BusinessLine on Wednesday.
Earlier, Domino’s Pizza had experimented with vegetarian-only restaurants locally here for some time. “We got good response from our customers who thanked us for protecting their religious sentiments. So, this time around we decided to roll out the veg-only plan nationally, mainly Gujarat and Maharashtra where Navratri is celebrated with gusto.”
Kaul pointed out that many Indians have been traditionally refraining from consuming non-vegetarian stuff during the Navratri festival. They love veg-only menus at restaurants as well. Only about 35-40% customers, in this festive season, go for a non-vegetarian stuff.
Accordingly, Domino’s Pizza will offer 100% vegetarian menus across the selected 164 restaurants, including 59 in Gujarat, during the festival period when many devout Hindus also fast. The other selected restaurants are in Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh.
This is the first time that Domino’s Pizza, or any other major pizza chain, has rolled out such an initiative nationally.
Domino’s Pizza is India’s market leader in the chained pizza market with nearly 72% market share (as per Euro Monitor Consumer Food Service Report, 2015). Overall, JFL has almost 20% market share in food industry., with India being the largest market globally for Domino’s Pizza, after the USA.
In the current financial year, JFL plans to open 150 new Domino’s Pizza and 30 Dunkin’ Donuts restaurants in the country.
In the first quarter of 2015-16, JFL’s income increased by 20% to Rs 570 crore with net profit being Rs 29.5 crore, up by 6%.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.