Food for thought

New Delhi, Aug. 6: Fast food chains such as Domino’s Pizza, Nirula’s, Pizza Hut and KFC have drawn up expansion plans.

While Pizza Hut and Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) plans to increase the number of outlets from 134 to 175 by the end of this year, Nirula’s will add another 25 outlets to its existing 51 by the end of 2008. Domino’s Pizza has 140 stores in 31 cities.

Sudipta Sengupta, senior vice-president — sales and marketing, Nirula’s, said, “The market is growing by leaps and bounds. The growth is so buoyant that we cannot even project growth rates beyond 2010.”

In the next two to three years, Domino’s Pizza plans to open 50 to 60 outlets in 20 more cities. Nirula’s is present only in northern India now. It will launch its operations in Mumbai by the first quarter of the next fiscal.

It plans to open 50 to 60 outlets in the city. The company will also go to south India by the middle of next year and to the east by 2009. It plans to have 200 outlets by the end of 2009.

Pizza Hut and KFC, having explored the metros, will enter Tier I and Tier II markets.

Dev Amritesh, vice-president—marketing, Domino’s Pizza, said, “We have a 40 per cent share in the pizza market and our growth last year was a healthy 50 per cent. The quicker we penetrate the Indian market the faster we will grow.”

As part of its expansion plans, Domino’s will also enter the ice cream market. It plans to retail branded ice creams.

Nirula’s has a production facility in Noida, where it produces 15 thousand litres of ice cream per day. It has two ice cream brands, Nirula’s ice cream and Dairy Cream, which is the institutional brand. The company will raise the capacity of its production facility to 20,000 litres a day.

In the past four years, Domino’s Pizza has maintained a steady growth rate of 30 per cent. The growth rate of Nirula’s has doubled this year.

Niren Chaudhary, managing director of Yum Restaurants, said, “During the past two years, Pizza Hut has grown around 10 to 20 per cent. We have experienced a 30 per cent growth in the last two to three months since the new TV commercial went on air.”

“We are planning to double our business in the next three years,” he added. Pizza Hut and Nirula’s are planning to take both equity and franchisee routes for their expansions.