Pizza chain Domino’s today unveiled plans to take a slice out of rival Greggs’ business model as it eyed opening another 700 stores over the next decade.
The London-listed firm said it hoped to pivot towards more in-store customer collection with the offer of new £4 lunchtime deals for office workers as it sought to open dozens of new sites in city centre locations.
CEO Andrew Rennie told the Standard: “We’re quite excited about the £4 lunch – we’ve never played in that space before and there is huge upside potential.
“Only about 35% of our orders are in-store collections whereas in the US it’s 55%.”
It comes as Greggs announced plans to open another 160 stores in the next year as boss Roisin Currie said pizza slices had become one of the most popular items on its menu.
Last year Britain’s biggest bakery chain opened a new pizza-making plant in Enfield with the capacity to produce as many as 1.5 million slices of pizza per week.
Domino’s today said it was eyeing growing its estate to as many as 2,000 stores by 2033 with sales increasing to £2.5 billion annually as it charted a course for rapid expansion.
The firm posted sales growth of 5.8% to £1.57 billion in 2023, with underlying profits flat at around £100 million. Net debt decreased by £20.5 million from the start of the year to £232.8 million.
But the bold plans were not enough to impress shareholders as the stock fell 10.7% to 330p amid signs that sales had begun to contract in the latter half of the year.
“There were some really good marketing initiatives in the first half but we tailed that off in the second half,” Rennie said.
