Charting out an aggressive expansion plan, Jubilant FoodWorks (JFL), the leading food service player and popularly known as maker of Domino’s Pizza in India, would be shelling out around Rs 900 crore in the next twelve to eighteen months to open stores of multi brands and build food factories along with supply chain facilities.
The company will be spending a capex around Rs 500-600 crore to open stores of Domino’s Pizza and Popeyes, one of America’s popular chicken brands, which the company is in the process of establishing in India. It will be spending around Rs 300 crore for setting up food factories and related supply chain infrastructure.
Besides, the company’s Bengaluru multi-brand factory, being built at an outlay of Rs 250 crore will be commissioned in another four to six months.
Sameer Khetarpal, CEO & MD, Jubilant FoodWorks, told FE that in the medium term, the company wants to take the number of Domino’s Pizza outlets to 3,000 from the 1,701 currently. “ In line with our guidance, we are adding 240 to 250 stores every year. So, in another four to five years’ time, we should reach the 3,000-mark,” he said.
For Popeyes, the company has built the back-end supply chain in south and is ready to expand rapidly. “We are likely to open 40 to 50 stores in next 12 to 15 months. The company has 12 stores in Bengaluru and just opened a store in Chennai. The brand was brought to India by JFL a year ago,” he said.
Khetarpal said that the funding for the expansion will done through internal accruals, mostly from Domino’s Pizza’s earnings. “Domino’s Pizza has an yearly revenue of Rs 5,000 crore and accrues healthy margins, too,” he said.
Speaking about feedback on the recently launched 20-minute delivery for Domino’s Pizza, he said the programme was launched with an objective to bring the pizza oven closer to the customers by scientifically and safely reducing the delivery time. The company has launched the 20-minute delivery in areas where the outlets are closer to each other. “ The company had launched 500 outlets in the last two years. We have the network to serve the customers under 20 minutes. Our delivery time has come down because stores are closer to the customers. Wherever we have done that we have seen faster growth,” he said.
On the company’s experiments with local flavour, Khetarpal said he believes in many India and has been bringing out variants. The company has introduced local flavour pizzas with the traditional menu in Bengal. “ For South, we will be introducing chettinad chicken pizzas in another four months,” he said.
According to him, the customer feedback on product innovation has been encouraging and those stores have been growing faster than the others. The company has a pipeline of product innovation for all the regions and will be coming out with those products soon.
JFL holds the exclusive master franchise rights from Domino’s Pizza Inc to develop and operate the Domino’s Pizza brand in India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal. In India, it has a network of 1,701 Domino’s restaurants across 371 cities. In Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, the company operates through its 100% owned subsidiary, which currently has 40 and 11 restaurants, respectively.
It has also rights to develop and operate Dunkin’ restaurants in India and restaurants in India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan. The company currently operates 24 Dunkin’ restaurants across 8 Indian cities and 12 Popeyes restaurants in Bengaluru and one in Chennai. Besides, it operates, 14 Hong’s Kitchen and six Ekdum! biryani restaurants in different states. It also forayed online segment with ready-to-cook segment through ChefBoss range of sauces, gravies and pastes.