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Domino's London branch (icon image)
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Russell Boyce/ REUTERS
Bold plan: In 2015, the US pizza chain Domino's wanted to conquer the Italian market.
With regional ingredients, but also culinary controversial American classics such as pineapple.
In the motherland of pizza, of all places.
After seven years, Domino's has now withdrawn from Italy.
As the Bloomberg news agency reports, the last of the 29 branches closed last month.
There is ridicule on Twitter: "Domino's in Italy is like trying to sell snow on the North Pole," writes one user.
Another user writes that the opening was very daring.
The real surprise about the retreat: It shouldn't have been the culinary delights.
At least not officially.
Business faltered with the emergence of third-party providers like Deliveroo, Just Eat, or Glovo.
Due to the corona crisis and the closure of restaurants, the local restaurants rethinked and relied on the new delivery service providers.
In the fourth quarterly report of last year, according to Bloomberg, the company reported on that "significantly increased competition in the market for food delivery".
But not afraid of pineapple on pizza?
Domino's saw its chance primarily in service: the long-established pizzerias in Italy were not supposed to be able to keep up with the chain's modern IT systems and speed of delivery.
According to the New York Times, a representative of Domino's Pizza Italia celebrated the opening of the fifth restaurant in Rome with the words: There are Italians "who are not afraid to put pineapple on a pizza «.
But Domino's has been reducing operations in the country since 2020.
According to Bloomberg, the debt was more than ten million euros at the end of 2020.
The franchisee ePizza originally wanted to open more than 880 branches in Italy.
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