Dolomite To Invest ₹100 Cr To Expand Jamies Outlets

In its first phase, the company will increase its presence to about 50 restaurants, doubling the network in the next five years to about 100 restaurants, and achieve revenues of about ₹400-500 crore.

Currently, the company runs about 17 pizzerias and the rest are the larger format Jamie’s Italian restaurants. Barring two restaurants which are franchised, the company owns and operates the other outlets. “The market opportunity for brands doing good pizzas is massive in India and this isn’t just in the tier one and two cities," Jasper Reid, managing director said in an interview.

IMM, Dolomite’s parent, recently sold its Wendy’s burger chain business to Rebel Foods for an undisclosed sum. “There are quite a lot of challenges in the quick service format. While in theory, they are very scalable, but gross margins are very low. So to achieve profitability, there needs to be a huge scale, It was a good time for us to sell. Rebel Foods will be able to achieve that scale, " he said. Reid didn’t disclose how much Faasos’ parent Rebel paid for the brand.

The sale of Wendy’s will help fund the expansion of the other two brands.

“India is one of the most under-penetrated restaurant markets in the world. There are amazing opportunities in the casual dining business here and at present, there is a big gap because many global brands that sell pizzas in this segment have come and gone from India. I think why we have done well is because we behave like a local brand because we source a majority of our produce from India and many companies have not done that in the past," he added.

In 2018, Indian venture capital firm Hunch Ventures took a significant minority stake in Dolomite Restaurants, owned by International Market Management (IMM), which Reid founded.

The restaurant business employs about 400 people and has achieved unit level profitability, he said. Typically, its customers spend anywhere between ₹400-600 per person in the smaller format pizzeria outlets and about ₹800-900 in the larger format one.

“We are also getting more efficient in the way we are building our restaurants and spend anywhere between ₹1-2 crore per outlet," he said.

As per a recent estimate, the entire organized restaurant market in India was about ₹4.2 trillion in FY20. Although, the National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI) the restaurant industry was crippled by the pandemic and reported a 53% decline in business in FY21 down to ₹2 trillion, several restaurants have seen a bounce-back in business since.