Fast food restaurant chains such as Puzata Khata are planning to expand into new fast food segments alongside their expansion.
"The fast food restaurant market is far from saturated. There are virtually no fast-food seafood or chicken restaurants. Snack bars, grill bars, and Chinese restaurants are also underrepresented," says Igor Didok, head of marketing and advertising for the Puzata Hata restaurant chain. "Therefore, it's entirely possible that we'll expand into one of these formats."
The company's immediate plans include expanding the Puzata Khata chain to 25 restaurants by the end of 2007 and to 40 by 2009. Restaurants will open in Kharkiv, Donetsk, and Odessa by the end of the year. The chain will also expand in Kyiv, Dnipro, and Zaporizhzhia. By the end of 2008, six restaurants will be operating in Kharkiv, five in Lviv, nine in Dnipro, and 12 in Kyiv. Investments in each restaurant will total approximately $1 million.
The Lviv-based franchise chain "Fast Food Systems," which owns the brands "Pizza Celentano," "Kartoplyana Hata," "Café Punkt," and "Yapi," plans to increase the number of restaurants in its chain from 115 to 200 over the next few years. An additional 12 locations will open by the end of the year. The young and rapidly growing chains "Dva Gusya" and "Zdorovenki Buli" plan to open several more restaurants by the end of 2007. The exact number of locations is not being announced.
According to experts, the restaurant retail market in cities with a population of over a million is occupied by a maximum of 40%. Currently, the number of fast food restaurants in cities with a population of over a million is approximately 25-30 per district. Cities with populations of up to 500,000 people have 20-30 restaurants. In the US and Europe, this figure is several times higher. Market players believe the growth in the number of fast food restaurants is directly related to the rising prosperity of residents of large cities, as well as the development of a culture of eating out. The development of shopping malls and shopping and entertainment centers has a significant impact on the size of the fast food market. Analysts predict that the domestic fast food restaurant market will reach saturation by 2012. After that, the profitability of this business will decline somewhat.
