Domino’s is a USA based pizza delivery chain that prides itself on its 30 minutes delivery.
Pizza is a traditional Italian dish.
In 2015, Domino’s opened its first store in Italy. By then, it already had 12,000 stores worldwide and was doing well.
The plan was to open 880 stores in Italy. Italy’s total area is 116,350 miles. This would mean a Domino’s store every 132 miles, on average.
The company borrowed money for this expansion.
However, some things did not quite work out.
Once local pizzerias realised that customers wanted home delivery of pizza, they started offering that service. They also tied up with hyperlocal delivery services to send the pizzas home.
In terms of taste, Italian customers preferred local pizza to the thick crust version usually served by Americans.
This led to a total debt of over 10.6 million Euros (at the end of 2020, which is the last year when returns have been filed) for the company.
In 2020, they started scaling back operations (this means not opening more stores and reducing work at the existing stores also).
They also had to go to court and seek protection against creditors taking away company assets against unpaid loans. In April, a 90 day protection was given to the company. That protection ended on 1st July 2022.
Today, Domino’s closed the last of their 29 branches in Italy.
With this, the chain has formally exited Italy as a market.