Chutzpah! Domino Pizza’s Italy plans

In a move that seems either foolish or arrogant beyond belief, U.S. pizza chain has announced its plan to blanket most of Italy with its fast-food pizza offerings, opening 800 new stores by 2030.

Domino is not new to Italy; it already has 28 stores in Rome, Milan and Turin, with the first opened in 2015. But so far it has been more a novelty than a factor in the Italian pizza market.

Alessandro Lazzaroni, CEO of Domino’s Italy, says the company is aiming for 2% of the market, with a plan that includes fourteen pizzerias in Milan, three in Brescia and two each in Bergamo and Monza, with single stores planned for Varese, Como, Lecco, Cremona, Mantua, Lodi and Pavia. It’s counting on its delivery system to help them edge into the market.

The plans all focus on central and northern Italy. The south is too far for the company’s supply distribution, and maybe too close for comfort to the traditional home of pizza, although Lazzaroni insists that Domino’s product in Italy will be “traditional Italian pizza” made using “locally-sourced wheat, “It will be purely Italian in all other respects too…the tomato sauce, mozzarella, gorgonzola and Parma ham.”