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Below: Eat a pepperoni pizza on the Central to its entry into key African nation might not have been the brand’s first
summit of Mount Kilimanjaro … Pizza markets has, says Blackford, been the choice. “But we had a franchise partner
Hut’s Africa GM, Randall Blackford, South African operation. “South Africa has come forward [there] and we signed a deal
and team been a good market for us, an attractive with them and got started”.
one. But the rest of Africa has been really
good to us too,” he observes, reflecting on The store has been a huge success. “I
the brand’s African journey to date and his think it’s a combination of a lot of African
own earlier expectations that the African nations being ready to take the next step
operations would comprise 90% South as consumers and wanting to get into big
African exposure. brands. There’s also not a massive amount
of competition when you compare it to
As things stand, it’s the rest of Africa South Africa,” he says.
that is providing the growth spurt. And it
all started in Zambia. After Zambia, the chain pushed north
into Kenya, Angola, Tanzania, Ghana and
Consumers want Uganda. “We opened a store in Djibouti
to get into the big (in the Horn of Africa), of all places, and
international brands that has been doing really well,” says
Blackford. “We also have five outlets in
“We started in Zambia a year-and-a-half Mauritius, which have been around for a
ago, [which] really wasn’t by design,” recalls while. We are actively going as quickly
Blackford, who admits the Southern African as we can into all these countries.”
In addition, the company opened in
Mozambique a few months ago and
has operations in Egypt.
Hard lessons
Despite the accelerated push into Africa,
the ride has not been an easy one, reflects
Blackford. “Supply chain has been far and
away our biggest challenge. The good
thing is we have pretty much got in and
learnt along the way; but it’s a big up-front
cost for us.”
His comments are echoed by Louis
Venter, GM of Kuku Foods, KFC’s
operation in Tanzania. He noted ahead of
the first store opening in Dar es Salaam
in 2015 that “it is not an easy country to
import into. There is always a challenge”.
While Venter spoke of his interest
in expanding the use of local suppliers
to alleviate the dependence on South
Africa, Blackford is pragmatic about SA’s
importance in the Pizza Hut supply chain.
“When we came to South Africa we
said we had to develop a local supply
chain and we spent the first eight to 12
months setting up suppliers in South
Africa. That was, for us, the real benefit of
getting into South Africa first. Had we not
had SA it would have been a lot tougher,”
he says, noting the particular reliance on
South Africa in other southern African
countries, as well as the benefits of a
weaker SA currency.
Issue 4 2016 strategicmarketingafrica 43
