Publications
Partners
Cape Town - The first Dunkin' Donuts in South Africa is set to open its doors in Cape Town this week.
Coffee and bakery chain Dunkin’ Donuts has more than 11 500 restaurants in 40 countries worldwide selling about 60 cups of coffee every second and more than 1.8 billion cups of coffee a year.
During a sneak pre-opening peek at the location in Frans Conradie Drive, N1 City - next to the Burger King - Davin Berrill, chief operating officer of Dunkin' Donuts South Africa, told Fin24 that Grand Parade Investments (GPI) felt now was a good time to bring this product to the SA market.
GPI is the master franchise holder for Dunkin' Donuts in the country. Under the licence agreement signed earlier this year, it would develop over 250 Dunkin’ Donuts restaurants and more than 70 Baskin-Robbins ice cream shops in South Africa. This will be done through both corporate-owned stores and franchised outlets.
The master agreement also provides for the introduction of Baskin-Robbins ice cream products to supermarket chains and convenience stores in SA over the licence period. Baskin-Robbins currently has more than 7 600 locations in nearly 50 countries, serving over 300 million customers each year worldwide.
According to Berrill, it is the special Dunkin' Donuts coffee, combined with colourful donuts - of which 28 varieties will be on offer in SA to begin with - that set the brand aside. There are also savoury snacks like bagels and wraps on the menu.
READ: Dunkin' Donuts, Baskin-Robbins coming to SA
"Consumers are moving away from instant coffee towards freshly ground and freshly brewed options. Therefore, the coffee market in SA is growing. It is estimated to be worth R2.9bn per year currently and is set to grow to about R3.5bn by 2019," said Berrill.
Berrill further explained that, because GPI is a Western Cape based company, it decided to open the first number of Dunkin' Donuts outlets in the Western Cape. The site in Frans Conradie Drive belongs to GPI and was bought with the goal of housing all the company's various brands. Another five Dunkin' Donuts outlets will open in the Western Cape before December. Later it will be expanded to Gauteng too.
At this point all the outlets will be corporate owned, but Berrill said possible franchising later down the line could follow.
Apart from the job creation aspect of the introduction of Dunkin' Donuts to SA, Berrill said that - as with Burger King, which GPI brought to SA in 2013 - the company tries to localise production as much as possible. Burger King, for instance, started its own burger plant in SA.
Read Fin24's top stories trending on Twitter: Fin24’s top stories
