Maestro Pizza: Disrupting the Pizza Business Model in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Maestro Pizza, established in 2013, significantly impacted the pizza industry in Saudi Arabia. The founder and CEO, Khalid Al Omran, identified an opportunity to enter the market with a low-price strategy by acquiring a small pizza outlet in Riyadh and rebranding it as ‘Maestro’. Maestro Pizza became a success story in no time and expanded to over 150 stores. Initially, the big players in the pizza industry ignored Maestro, with the impression that their business strategy was different, which helped Maestro Pizza remain under the radar. However, as soon as Maestro started opening just next to these branded outlets, depriving them of customer traffic, Pizza Hut shut down everywhere in Saudi Arabia except ‘Jeddah’, and Domino’s started reducing its prices massively to compete with Maestro. Many other regional pizza outlets started following the same strategy, which increased the competition and reduced the prices, further shifting the competition to pure price-based. Furthermore, to make matters worse, coronavirus disease-2019 disrupted Maestro’s supply chains, which impacted quality control. What can Maestro do to maintain its competitive edge in the market?