They have already opened a restaurant in Verona in late March and plan to add two more by yearend.
The three local businessmen opened the first KFC restaurant in Romania two decades ago and the Pizza Hut franchise is even older.
Mark Hilton, the British executive who runs the operations of the local group of the three entrepreneurs, explains that that particular region in Italy had its own small franchisees but the expertise of the Romanian entrepreneurs convinced the US-held KFC to give them the opportunity to develop it.
“The manager of our first KFC in Italy is Romanian, she used to work for Pizza Hut 20 years ago and 12 years ago left the country.”
The executive said the group was looking to a local team and also had Romanian employees handling the business there, which is an important career opportunity for them.
The three businessmen hold several franchises, that is KFC Romania and Republic of Moldova, Pizza Hut, Pizza Hut Delivery, Paul, Cinnabon and Hard Rock Café. The restaurant group ended last year with more than 640 million lei (EUR142 million) sales, an increase of 25% on 2015.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)