PIZZA HUT in Thailand has set a five-year strategy to more than double the number of its restaurants and to achieve annual double-digit growth in revenue.
Sabina Rizvi, the new general manager of Pizza Hut Thailand, said in an exclusive interview with The Nation that the company currently operated 97 outlets in various formats, ranging from delivery and dine-in to express.
"We want to more than double the number of our Pizza Hut stores in Thailand in the next five years. We will invest more than half a billion baht in our five-year expansion," she said, adding that about 70 per cent of the expansion would be in delivery outlets.
Before becoming general manager of Pizza Hut Thailand on December 1, Rizvi had been the chief financial officer for KFC and Pizza Hut at Yum Restaurants International (Thailand) for three years. Before that, she worked for Yum Restaurants in Canada for six years as the CFO for KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell.
Pizza Hut has been in Thailand for more than 15 years. It says its menu is constantly revamped to meet the needs of Thai consumers. The services and quality of food are the same as in Pizza Huts worldwide.
"My vision is to make Pizza Hut the most loved pizza brand in Thailand," Rizvi said.
She added that the company had four strategies: To offer the best affordable pizzas; to drive growth by focusing on delivery services; to use digital technology so that customers can access the Pizza Hut brand in different ways; and to ensure world-class service so its customers keep coming back.
"We just relaunched our new digital platform last September. We have also achieved double-digit growth since that launch in online ordering," she said.
Rizvi said the company launched its first express restaurant at Mega Bangna shopping centre on Bang Na-Trat Road last September, and another one last month at Seacon Square. The express-store format was successfully piloted in the United States. The stores occupy only 50 square metres compared with more than 200sqm taken up by Pizza Hut's conventional dine-in restaurants.
She said Pizza Hut posted 8-per-cent year-on-year growth in sales in the first three quarters of last year.