Archana Sharma – New Delhi
India’s QSR segment, which has been already witnessing rapid expansions of many international and home-grown brands, will have two more brands expanding their footprint. Sbarro, a chain of pizza restaurants popular for its New York style pizza internationally, will be opening around 50 outlets by mid 2016. Elaborating on the same, Akhil Puri, CEO, north and east India, Sbarro and CEO, Jyoti International Food, informed, “In the northern region itself, the company is planning to open about seven stores by 2015. The brand has about 50 outlets in the pipeline to be operational by 2016, with around 20 outlets to be functional by the end of 2015.” With three regional franchisees in India for north and east, west and southern region, Sbarro opened their 15th outlet in March 13, 2015, in Bandra, Mumbai.
Also to provide the same quality standards across all their outlets, Sbarro will be soon launching training centres in all three franchise regions. “With one outlet in Mumbai, Bengaluru and Delhi each to be designated as the training centre, the employees will be given six to eight weeks training.” Currently, Sbarro has training facilities in the US and Philippines.
Meanwhile, PizzaExpress will be opening 50 outlets in India in the next five years. Elaborating on the same, Ramit Bharti Mittal, head, business development, Gourmet Investments, stated, “Being in the premium casual dining space, and unlike a QSR or fine dining segment, we want to create a benchmark for our brand and quality casual dining pizzas.” Gourmet Investments holds the exclusive master franchise rights for the PizzaExpress brand in India and South Asia including Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Bhutan and Maldives. Talking about investment plans, Mittal informed that each outlet takes around `three crore due to its location and design.