Pizza Capers to expand across SE Asia

Gourmet pizza franchise Pizza Capers is set to ramp up its international expansion, with further stores planned for Penang, Kuala Lumpur, Shanghai and Jakarta in early 2011.

The decision to enter the new markets follows the opening of a Singapore store two months ago.

The Singapore operation was set up by an Australian ex-pat, but Pizza Capers co-founder Anthony Russo said that the new stores will be run by locals.

“We thought it would primarily be ex-pats, but 99.9% of customers in Singapore are local nationals, so this opens up markets for us,” he told StartupSmart.

“These new markets are similar in terms of geographic and socio-economic terms and they don’t have that guilt-free fast food choice that we offer. We are in a niche area and we want to make a move to take advantage of that.”

Domestically, Pizza Capers, which sells gourmet, health-based pizzas, has 85 franchises. Russo said that he hoped to have 350 franchisees within three years.

“We are opening at least one store a week in Australia at the moment,” he said. “We should have around 105 stores by Christmas. We’ve never had a franchisee close down and about 75% of our franchisees want to open another store somewhere else.”

“We’ve never had to advertise our franchises and we’ve got a nice cross section across different areas. We are opening up a few stores in regional NSW, but it’s hard in Sydney. The demand for real estate is so high there. In Victoria and South Australia, we are opening across the entire state.”

Russo said that an investment of $250,000 was required to open a store, claiming that a 6% royalty and advertising charge was “about on par” with other, similar franchises.