Globally, pizza has been the food of the pandemic, as home-stuck consumers turned to the savoury dish of Italian origin, the comfort food of choice in much of the Western world.
So much that sales from the takeaway and delivery channels are making up for the slump in footfall in restaurants as people cut back on non-essential trips out of their homes to flatten the curve on coronavirus.
But over in Bangladesh, which was just entering into the golden age of pizza before the pandemic hit -- with new establishments popping up every other day focusing on takeaways and delivery given the big profit margins to be had -- sales growth has largely been cold.
“Pizza is an expensive item and is mostly enjoyed by the well-off,” said Jayed Bin Amin, operation manager of Pizza Guy, which has four outposts in Dhaka.
Due to health and safety concerns, people are just not coming to the restaurant.
University students are the biggest consumers of the dish, which in its basic form is a flatbread topped with tomato and cheese and baked in an oven. Given that all educations institutions have been shut since March 17, that demographic is gone.
