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Domino’s is closing its last location in Italy after seven years, Bloomberg reports.
The pizza company once had plans to open around 880 stores in Italy by 2030.
Increasing competition in food delivery was cited as the reason for the closure.
Domino’s tried to sell American pizza to Italians and didn’t do very well. The American pizza company withdrew from Italy and closed the last of its 29 branches there, reports the Bloomberg news agency.
The first Domino’s in Italy opened in 2015. The company hoped to differentiate itself from the competition by doing two things. First, that the pizzas were delivered.
Former CEO Patrick Doyle said in 2014 that there is still hope for a distinctly American pizza chain as Italians don’t have many options for pizza delivered to their homes. “There’s a lot of pizza out there, but there aren’t a lot of pizza delivery services,” Doyle said. “So there might still be a chance.”
When Domino’s first opened a store in Milan, Alessandro Lazzaroni, who led the brand’s business in the country, said: “We will also benefit from Domino’s excellent technology, which is capable of online delivery services industry like no other.In this way we can bring to the Italians what they are completely missing: a very good local pizza, served quickly and hot at home and which can be ordered online with a few clicks and at a very competitive price .”
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Domino’s Italy’s menu features American-style pizzas
The brand’s second selling point in Italy has to be its American taste for pizza, combined with its adherence to the Italian pizza tradition.
“We are going to use a recipe that we have developed using local wheat,” said Lazzaroni at the opening of Domino’s in Milan. “Everything else is pure Italian. We source all our products from Italian manufacturers. We developed our own recipe, starting from the original pizza recipe, with Italian products such as 100% tomato sauce and mozzarella, and products such as prosciutto di parma, gorgonzola, grana padano and mozzarella di bufala campana.”
Domino’s Italy’s menu includes American pizzas, such as a cheeseburger pizza, a BBQ chicken pizza and a Hawaiian pizza. Lazzaroni once said he hoped to open 850 new Domino’s stores across Italy by 2030, adding to the 30 or so that already existed at the time.
But other competitors soon began to follow the delivery service, especially during the pandemic when customers began using the delivery service more frequently. ePizza SpA, the Italian company that had the master franchise rights to operate Domino’s in Italy, blamed the closings on “increased levels of competition in the food delivery market,” according to Bloomberg.
Domino’s did not respond to a request from Business Insider.
This text was translated from English by Lisa Ramos-Doce. You can find the original here.
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