Pizza Hut to intensify focus on home delivery

"Pizza Hut has been delivering food items for a long time in India but given the growing demand in this segment, we have decided to focus on delivery by aggressively focusing on our sub brand, PHD," PHD General Manager Ashok Bajpai told PTI.

The firm launched the first PHD in 2008, in Bangalore on a trial basis and is now looking to aggressively expand in the delivery format.

"Currently Pizza Hut operates 35 standalone PHD outlets and about 145 Pizza Hut casual dine restaurants also have a certain delivery section branded as PHD," Bajpai said.

While he did not disclose the current sales turnover of either Pizza Hut or PHDs, Bajpai said by 2015, the company is aiming "to garner turnover of USD 100 million only from the delivery" segment.

He said the company plans to set up 300 standalone PHD outlets by 2015, but did not provide investment details for the planned expansion.

The new outlets planned will be franchisee operated like the existing ones, he added.
"PHD concept has been in the international markets for a long time now and in the last couple of years it has been introduced in markets such as Saudi Arabia, Korea, Taiwan, Japan and Lebanon, where it is already a success," he said.

In 2008, Pizza Hut had announced a brand transformation strategy in India which involved launch of an 'enhanced dine- in' concept in the casual dining segment.

As a part of the strategy the company had upgraded the look and feel of its existing outlets and had rolled out a new logo and a tagline to support the brand's evolution.
With the increasing demand in the home and office delivery segment, the company has decided to enhance its focus on delivery, besides dine-in.