Round Table Pizza shuts shop in UAE
A representative at DWTC said the branch there had closed and wouldn’t be reopening
Round Table Pizza, the American chain of pizza restaurants, appears to have shut shop in the UAE, according to a number of people familiar with the matter.
None of the restaurant’s seven branches in the UAE have working telephone lines, and the Round Table Pizza at Dubai World Trade Centre (DWTC) has its shutters down.
According to a representative at DWTC, the pizza branch there “has closed and won’t open again.”
Closed for almost a month
Staff in the neighbouring shops and restaurants at DWTC reported that Round Table Pizza’s outlet there had been closed for nearly a month, telling Gulf News that they had heard it was due to lack of business.
At the time of writing, Round Table Pizza’s corporate office in the United States had not responded to a request for comment, whilst the local franchisee in the UAE, reportedly named Ghassan Wehbe, has no publicly available contact details or website. And it is unclear if Webhe is still affiliated with the business in the UAE. He has no online presence that could be found.
All of the pizza chain’s outlets are listed as permanently closed on the website Round Menu, a restaurant guide, although Zomato is still showing the restaurant at DWTC as open, despite it being physically shut when checked yesterday morning.
It is unclear how many jobs may have been lost in the closure.
In 2009, Round Table Pizza announced that its local partner had won the rights to expand his portfolio of seven franchised pizza restaurants in the UAE to 17. However, these additional 10 restaurants had never opened.
At the time of the announcement (in 2009), Round Table president Rob McCourt said: “Mr Wehbe has faithfully represented our brand’s core values in the UAE and his commitment has paved the way for further growth.”
The statement then from Round Table Pizza also made reference to further expansion across the Gulf and Lebanon, in partnership with Wehbe.
This regional growth also failed to materialise, with Bahraini conglomerate M.H. Al Mahroos being chosen as the preferred franchisee instead.
Al Mahroos Foods, a subsidiary of M.H. Al Mahroos, currently operates three Round Table Pizza branches in Bahrain according to its website, and in a 2015 statement announced it was planning to expand to neighbouring countries including Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
A sign of the times
According to retail expert Colin Beaton, the closures are simply a sign of the times.
“This is a reflection of the retail market maturing. You need an efficient marketing operation, a sophisticated business strategy, and many more things to compete. Companies that cannot operate efficiently and effectively will not survive,” said Beaton, Managing Director of Limelight Creative Services, a retail strategy firm.
He added that the ‘Build it and they will come’ approach of the past would not work any longer.
“In this soft economy, companies that aren’t able to operate and market effectively will not be able survive, but that’s the sign of a mature market. Those who aren’t efficient or who don’t keep their promises won’t make it,” he said.