All fired up

With moves closely resembling those made on a chessboard, Pizza Boys is taking the fight to the competition by turning up the heat in the kitchen.

In a move that will cause a ripple throughout the food industry, the company will be rolling out early next year franchises of its pizza business. It will also try to capitalise on Trinidad and Tobago’s latest penchant and taste for gourmet or specialty coffees by setting up coffee shops in selected areas. The coffee shops are to be known as “Rituals : Grounds for Enjoyment,” while the pizza franchises will be rolled out as “Pizza Express.”  Pizza Boys Chairman, Mario Sabga Aboud, said it was all a question of timing the market. Franchising, he said, will give people an opportunity to start their own business with the knowledge and expertise of a company with a proven track record. “People are not going into something blindly,” he said. The company is looking at setting up 50 pizza franchises throughout the company. Already people have been trained in what is required to make the Pizza Boys formula work. “We want a presence in every town,” he said, noting that Pizza Express is designed for takeout and delivery. Domino Pizza in the US, he said, is based on that concept and has been a success.

“Pizza Boys is looking at ways to be innovative and this was one way to expand our customer base,” he said, noting that the company wanted to keep the franchising concept simple. “It is all part and parcel of the strategic vision for the company,” said Jearlean John, CEO , Pizza Boys, noting that their business models were not lifted out of a textbook. Norman Sabga Aboud, Managing Director, Pizza Boys, likened the company’s franchising to that of a turnkey solution. “We are giving people a model to work with,” he said. That involves just about everything, from how the floor plan and store should look and colour scheme to cooking the pizza and hoagies themselves. Although set up costs depend on size and location, the cost of a franchise can cost between $200, 000 - $600,000. That’s reasonable for people wanting to set up a franchise, John said. “We wanted to make the vision credible and flexible,” said John and described the company’s philosophy as “top down, bottom up.” Pizza Boys foray into the franchising business is in part a direct result of the foreign franchisers that have sprung up over Trinidad and Tobago over the years : Ruby Tuesday’s, Tony Romas, KFC and Pizza Hut.

John says Pizza Boys is going through a learning curve, and was at the top of its game right now. Franchising, she reckons, fits right in. “We want to retain the competitive edge,” John said of the company’s strategy. People need not have a business background to apply for a franchise, John said, noting that all training will be provided by the company. Pizza Boys spent two years tweaking  its franchising formula and fine-tuning its marketing strategy. “We wanted to create a model that was portable and one that could be out in every location and also be successful, ” she says in an interview at Pizza Boys Head Office in San Juan last week.  For now, only the pizza and hoagies will be made at these franchises. It’s not the company’s first foray into franchising. For some years now, Pizza Boys has used the same business model to expand its doughnut business, “Donut Boys.” Donut Boys was a franchise that matured and expanded regionally.

A brochure prepared by Pizza Boys for potential franchisors shows the exact time, for instance, that a pizza must be cooked for. They have also been told that sticking to the Pizza Boys model is crucial for success. “‘The key to success in any franchising business is to keep it simple,” the chairman said, noting that barriers to entry should also be low. “Pizza Boys can’t afford to wait for customers to come to us, so we have to go to them,” he said. John notes that while the franchising businesses here were modelled on the US way of doing things, there was not that Caribbean indigenous flavour to them. The company hopes to change that. For Pizza Boys, its a chance to “weave ourselves into the community,” John says, noting that the company was aware that it could help generate employment by doing so. TT can’t depend on government alone, she reasons.

The managing director noted that the coffee shops were modelled on “Starbucks,” where they are corporate owned. These are not to be franchised out though. “Rituals” is  the brainchild of the chairman and who has now been professionalyy trained as a “barista” — someone intimate with the art of making coffee. This is his baby, he says. There is already a coffee bar at Crown Point in Tobago and one was opened in Gulf City on Monday. “Rituals” will also be set up at Pizza Boys, Maraval, Long Circular and Trincity Mall. There is going to be both hot and cold coffees and all beans are going to be imported, Mario said. “Five years ago, I would have said ‘no’ to having a coffee bar,” he said. Now TT’s tastes has changed, and he thought this was time to put this on the front burner. “The coffee market has great growth potential,” he said, noting that coffee lovers were short changed when it came to coffee. “Rituals,” he said, hopes to change that. By December 31, John says the company should have the six coffee outlets up and running. 

John and Sabga Aboud acknowledge though that franchising is here to stay, and is to be capitalised upon. “We saw an opportunity and went after it,” said Sabga Aboud. “We looked at the trends, and the trend was pointing to that,” Jearlean added. According to Pizza Boys figures, the company has 50 percent of the market volume in pizza. Both are aware that franchising carries with it high risks in that someone can easily ditch the rules and do their own thing. Inconsistency, they know, can kill any franchising venture. To deal with this quality control specialists will be deployed throughout the country making sure franchisors toe the line. “The product taste must not change,” John says, stressing that franchisors cannot change the model at their whim and fancy.

Asked whether Pizza Boys were contributing to the fast food craze and contributing to the nation’s obesity problem, John said people were free to choose what they eat. “It comes down to freedom of choice,” she says, noting that it was up to the customer to decide what what he/she wanted. Norman looked at it differently, saying that pizza could be considered a balanced meal. “It has all the basic food groups,” he said noting pizza was baked, not fried.  He noted though that the company was trying to complement its existing menu by putting salad bars in pizza outlets. Still, he feels Pizza Boys has the best pizza in town, noting that they were always looking to see what others were  doing. Both managers stressed that this was an attempt by a local company to take franchising to the people. “What we have is suited to the TT’s palate and something that appeals across the board,” John said. The time has come to make Pizza Boys a household name in the Caribbean, Norman said. “We spent 17 years developing our brand name,” he says. There a whole lot of potential up the islands, he says. “We want to start to grow regionally.”