It has taken The Extreme Pita nearly 10 years to get from Mississauga to Manhattan, but the Canadian fast-food chain says it’s poised for a breakthrough.
The franchise firm, which until now has been largely a suburban phenomenon, is opening its first urban restaurant next month in the heart of New York City.
“We’ve been working for months tweaking the concept,” said Alex Rechichi, who co-founded the chain with his brother, Mark, in 1997.
The Manhattan site is part of an aggressive expansion plan that will see the company double the number of locations it opens next year, including more Toronto-area stores, Rechichi said.
“We don’t have a lot of stores in downtown Toronto,” he said. “When we started franchising seven years ago it was tough finding locations in the city that were competitive from a rental perspective and still a good retail location.”
So, the company opted to focus on the suburbs and beyond. The result is a chain of nearly 200 restaurants that stretches from coast to coast, including 12 in the southwestern United States.
In each region, the company teamed up with an “area developer,” someone who knew the market and would promote the brand in exchange for a percentage of the revenue, Rechichi said.
Now, with three area developers in Canada and two in the U.S., the company is poised to grow exponentially, with more than 100 restaurants planned for next year, he said.
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