The Spanish fast food group Food Delivery Brands (FDB) reported this Wednesday that it will stop operating its Telepizza and Pizza Hut stores in Chile. The company has justified the closure of its premises and the bankruptcy request in the South American country due to the complex economic environment in which it operates, which will lead it to concentrate its activity in Europe. With this decision, the company has advanced one step further in its slimming process, with which it seeks to reduce its presence in the Latin American market. FDB has declared in a public statement that it has taken multiple actions to prevent its departure from Chile, but that the current situation has led it to declare closure. «Despite having made every possible effort to sustain the company's operation, it has made the difficult decision to proceed with the closure of all its operations under the Telepizza and Pizza Hut brands in Chile, along with requesting the liquidation of the company before the competent courts,” he stated in the text. Regarding its motivations for leaving the country, the company has alluded to the complicated market context. “Food Delivery Brands' business in Chile has been affected by the consequences of a complex economic, competitive and financial environment, which has forced the FDB Group to make the decision to concentrate on its operations in Europe,” he said. The group has also justified the bankruptcy request with the aim of protecting its employees. “The decision to request the voluntary liquidation of the company is the most responsible path to preserve, to the greatest extent possible, the rights of the workers and the rest of the parties affected by this process,” he emphasized. In July 2024 it was reported that FDB had reached an agreement with the American company Yum!, owner of Pizza Hut, to recover the rights to its own brands Telepizza and Jeno's in Chile and Colombia. These rights were acquired in 2021 by Yum!, which executed a clause contained in the original agreement signed between the parties in 2018. In recent years, the pizza chains had recorded million-dollar losses. In 2021, the company lost nearly 21 billion pesos (about $21 million) in Chile, forcing the company to reach agreements with its creditors to reorganize its debt. That figure climbed to 79,000 million pesos (about 78 million dollars) in its most recent balance sheet, according to what was reported by La Tercera. These economic difficulties have gone hand in hand with a drastic change in the restaurant market in the country, which during the covid pandemic expanded strongly towards the food delivery system, which caused a diversification of products and of the competition. The departure of Food Delivery Brands has implied the closure of 100 Telepizza and Pizza Hut stores in Chile. This closure will not imply the complete disappearance of the brands, since some stores that are not operated by FDB and that operate as franchises will continue to stand, as reported by El Mercurio. The company employed 1,400 workers throughout the country, who will be left without a source of employment after the liquidation. Telepizza arrived in Chile in 1993, at the beginning of the brand's international expansion strategy. Its landing was innovative, since it allowed the massification of a product that until those years was not popular among Chilean consumers. The company rose to fame in 1995 thanks to a soap opera called Amor a Domicilio, whose story took place in one of its locations. It led the pizzeria market for much of the 1990s and 2000s, an influence that gradually diminished in the following years with the entry of new competitors.
