Domino’s foray into the motherland of pizza — Italy — proved to be a failure. The pizza restaurant company has closed its final Italy-based store after seven years of operating in the country.
If there’s a thing Italians don’t mess around about, it’s their food. Thin crust, Margherita-style pizza with mozzarella cheese so luscious it might as well be a liquid is a staple offering in the country. Contrast that with America’s own Domino’s — which offers a puffy, round piece of bread smothered in sauce flavored with a caricature of Italian spices and topped with shredded cheese — it’s not a mystery why the pizza chain didn’t really take off in Italy. According to Bloomberg, Domino’s has officially closed its last franchise operating in Italy after years of trying to find a foothold in the country in a franchising agreement with ePizza s.p.A.
“We attribute the issue to the significantly increased level of competition in the food delivery market with both organised chains and ‘mum & pop’ restaurants delivering food, to service and restaurants reopening post pandemic and consumers out and about with revenge spending,” says ePizza, quoted by Bloomberg, in their fourth-quarter 2021 earnings report.
Domino’s debut in Italy began in Milan as the first store in the Italian franchise. It opened in 2015 to franchisee Alessandro Lazzaroni. Lazzaroni told ABC News in 2015 that Italian Domino’s restaurants would feature a twist on the American-style pizza, sourcing ingredients locally and relying on more Italian-based ingredients like prosciutto. It was a nifty experiment that resulted in 29 stores being opened on Italian soil with a total of 880 planned, but an experiment that eventually ended in utter failure. Domino’s did not immediately return Gizmodo’s request for comment.
I’m not above ordering Domino’s every once in a while. As a New Jerseyan — one from the land of infinite local pizzerias — I’m staunch in my belief that there is always room for chain pizza every once in a while. However even with such a liberal view of the delicacy, even I can see that Domino’s Italy was doomed for failure. Arrivederci!