‘We just want to revive this brand’: How Canadian Pizza plans to turn its Singapore business around

And so the “2 for 1” offer has remained until today.

Canadian Pizza also caters to local tastes here and is “very close” to the hearts of customers, Mr Abdullah said. While it started off with Western-style menu options, the chain has become more Singaporean now, he said.

“We don’t go for fancy, international flavours and all that. (It is) very down to earth. If you are a Malay, you want something to your tastebuds, we have something. For Indians, we have, for Chinese, we have (it).”

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Canadian Pizza’s sales surged threefold on average across its outlets. 

“We had so many orders we didn’t have enough riders to send (the pizzas). So who was sending for me? My pilot friends … We had like 20 cars waiting outside just to deliver pizza,” said Mr Abdullah, who was still a franchisee then.

“At times, (the) outlet was shut for about four to five hours at one time because we couldn’t handle orders.” 

While things have stabilised, what happened highlights Canadian Pizza’s place in the market, he said.

“They know who we are. It’s just that they are just tired … forgot (about us), or they find us boring.”

SERVICE, SUPPLY ISSUES

As more customers turn to third-party food delivery platforms, issues such as service standards have cropped up. 

Half of Canadian Pizza’s delivery orders are via their website, while the other half are from third-party platforms.

“All this while we have been serving the pizza ourselves, my riders. So we have control over the riders. We have control over customer service, quality and delivery. But now we don’t,” said Mr Abdullah.

“When a customer makes these complaints, it is diverted back to us and this affects our image and reputation.”

To entice customers to order directly, Mr Abdullah said he plans to offer more promotions for orders through the Canadian Pizza website.

Manpower and supply chain concerns are problems he is also dealing with in recent times.

“With all these things going on in the world, we have issues of getting our cheese, sauce … We used to get everything from one particular supplier, but now we have about 20 suppliers,” he said.

To tackle the manpower crunch, Canadian Pizza is looking into automating more of its production. For one, dough production at several outlets has already been automated and Canadian Pizza plans to set up a central kitchen in November.