The company currently has 14 restaurants and 9 storefront delivery and take out locations.
“We only have eight Pizza Hut Delivery locations in Bucharest and one in Cluj. We want to expand to the biggest cities throughout the country.”
Pizza Hut Delivery was launched in 2007, 13 years after the arrival of the pizza restaurant brand in the country. There are 13 dine-in Pizza Huts in Romania, eight of which in Bucharest, two in Cluj and one in each of the main cities of the country, that is Pitesti, Timisoara, Iasi and Constanta.
Pizza Hut and Pizza Hut Delivery operate in Romania as a franchise via American Restaurant System, a company controlled by local businessmen Gabriel Popoviciu and Radu Dimofte. The company posted almost EUR30 million revenue last year and expects sales to be flat in 2014, following the closure of the restaurant in the Liberty Center mall.
The company has no plans to open any more restaurants now, but is preparing to open a new one in a mall in Bucharest next year. The only mall due to open in Bucharest in 2015 is Mega Mall, according to ZF data.
Its three best restaurants are located in Dorobanti, Cotroceni and Baneasa areas of Bucharest. The restaurant in Dorobanti (downtown) was Pizza Hut’s first in Romania and posted EUR2 million sales in its first year in business. Hilton will not say how high sales are at the moment, only that it is a top performer.
The 23 locations of Pizza Hut serve 3 million customers a year. Pizza Hut arrived in Romania at a time only a handful of other international brands were operating in the country. McDonald’s came a year later and three years after that it was KFC’s turn to open a restaurant. KFC is part of the same group run by Mark Hilton as Paul, Cinnabon, Pizza Hut and Hard Rock Cafe in Romania.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)