Responsive menus: being both global and local at the same time

Glocalization is a term that refers to the combination of the global and the local. How does this relate to pizza? On the one hand, pizza is one of the most popular fast-food items in the world and, at first glance, seems to be the same everywhere. On the other hand, you have to take into account the context of the country where the pizza is sold. For example, a franchisee in Bishkek launched a Ramadan combo, which is sold late at night specifically for Muslim fasting.

Another striking example is how people in different countries feel about corn on pizza. In 2014, we launched the Corn pizza in Russia, but it sold so poorly that we had to remove it from the menu after just a few weeks, even though new items usually stay on the menu for at least a quarter. In Romania, however, the pizza with corn, ham, and chicken is a huge hit, ranking third in sales.

In Asia, we actually had to change most of our pizza toppings. In China, the durian pizza was by far the biggest hit. Durian is such a pungent fruit that in Thailand it’s banned from most public places, buses, subways, hotels, and airports. Nevertheless, durian pizza is a must-have in China; even high-end Italian restaurants don’t hesitate to add it to their menus.

We also encountered some unique challenges in the UK market. Since there is a significant Indian population there, we tailored our menu specifically for them: for example, we introduced a Chicken Tikka pizza with sauces made from yogurt mixed with mint and tikka masala.

In 2023, the IMF team launched five new markets, and the Global R&D team traveled to each country to source ingredients and develop menus with a local twist.

In the first half of 2024, pizza gained popularity in Bali and Vietnam, as well as in Croatia, Nigeria, Bulgaria, and Turkey.

We store all recipes and menus from different countries in our internal knowledge base — Timofey Gorbun, Global R&D manager, talked about this in the video: