Suburban
Fast food giant Simbisa has opened a new branch in Braeside where it treated residents to free meals as a way of announcing its arrival in the suburb and thanking Zimbabweans for their support.
Ivan Zhakata Suburban Reporter
The new branch at the newly built BJ Southgate Mall has Chicken Inn, Pizza Inn, Creamy Inn and Bakers Inn, outlets as part of Simbisa’s strategy to grow its network with around 40 to 45 branches across the country and 15 branches slated for Harare (alone) in the next six months.
Simbisa runs fast-food brands such as Chicken Inn, Pizza Inn, Creamy Inn, Baker’s Inn, Fish Inn, Galito’s Africa, Nando’s, Steers, and Vida E Caffe and delivery service, Dial-a-Delivery.
Speaking at the official opening ceremony of the Braeside branch, Mr Warren Meares, Simbisa chief executive officer said they intend to invest over US$10 million in their retail outlets expansion drive across the country.
Mr Meares said Zimbabwe was a good investment destination and the group was doing all it could to exploit obtainable investment opportunities.
“We see Zimbabwe as a worthy investment destination, so we are on a serious expansion drive we are looking to invest about US$10 million,” he said.
“Besides opening this Braeside branch we are looking at opening between 40 and 45 new outlets this year, so we will be opening in Chegutu soon, and another 15 outlets in Harare alone within the next five to six months.”
Simbisa marketing manager Ms Tanya Thomas said the company would be broadening its promotions as an incentive to grow its customer base.
“We will continue to open more complexes as we go and we will be offering more household promotions that people have grown to love, which consist of Munchy Monday from Chicken Inn, Terrific Tuesday from Pizza Inn and Bread Bonanza from Bakers Inn.
“The reason why we are giving free meals is that we want to say thank you to the people of Zimbabwe for the continued support they have been giving us over the years,” she said.
Besides Zimbabwe, Simbisa has operations across Sub-Saharan Africa, with a total of 145 branches in Kenya, Zambia, Ghana, Mauritius, Namibia, Swaziland, Malawi and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The group operated as a business unit of Zimbabwe’s largest company by revenue, Innscor Africa, before it was unbundled and listed separately on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange (ZSE) in 2015.
