Key Points
- Selling pizzas to Italy was never going to be an easy task.
- Domino's have decided to call it quits in the home of the famous dish.
Selling pizzas to Italy was never going to be an easy task and Domino's have decided to call it quits in the home of the famous dish.
The chain, famed for its American-style pizzas, will close its remaining 29 outlets in the country, with the news largely greeted with a "so what?" from people in Rome.
To traditionalist Italians, Domino's were scorned for their Hawaiian pizza, a margarita topped with pineapple and attempts to persuade the locals into eating bacon-and-chicken or even hamburger pizzas failed dismally.
"It's like me going to England and making fish and chips, it doesn't make sense
"They wanted to take the pizza to the place where it was invented!?" said Rome resident Franco Gherardi.
Domino's withdrawal is the latest in a line of multinational companies scaling back from countries: Starbucks shut around 70 per cent of its Australian cafes in 2008 despite the country's fondness for coffee, while McDonalds left Iceland in the same year largely due to the global financial crash and the rising price of importing ingredients.
How Italians reacted to the closure of Domino's
Some Italians were unaware Domino's had ever existed in the country. "What is it?" said Jessica Zappone when asked about Domino's.
"There was no point in opening it," Florence resident Samuele Lacucci told Reuters.
"It's like me going to England and making fish and chips, it doesn't make sense; it's as if I went to China to open a Chinese restaurant."
The fast food giant landed in Italy in 2015 with an agreement with national restaurant franchise company ePizza, but local restaurants operated a slicker delivery system during the COVID-19 lockdown, and Domino's lost out.
Domino’s operations have also encountered some financial issues over the years, and by the end of 2020, the company had a debt of 10.6 million euros ($15 million).
