The man who built a pizza empire in South Africa

John Nicolakakis took over Roman’s Pizza from his father and turned less than 30 stores into South Africa’s second-largest pizzeria. 

Today, Roman’s is one of South Africa’s biggest fast-food chains, but its success story involves a lot of hard work, innovative marketing, and learning on the job. 

In 1993, restauranteur Arthur Nicolakakis purchased a struggling pizza restaurant in Pretoria with the intention of turning it around. This was Little Caesar’s, but it would eventually be rebranded to Roman’s Pizza in 2002.

Arthur’s son, John Nicolakakis, grew up around the fast food business in the family’s restaurants.

“From a very young age, about 12 or 13 years old, two pretty girls walked into our first restaurant at that time, and my dad said ‘here are menus, go serve them’,” he told kykNet. 

“So I’ve grown up with food. Food is in my blood.”

He started his formal business career as a currency trader, but in 2001, at only 23 years old, he joined the family business and was given free rein to grow the company. 

“In hindsight, it’s possible my dad played me,” Nicolakakis jokingly told Entrepreneur South Africa. 

“I had always been adamant that I was going to be a stock trader in New York, and yet here was this business with all the right foundations, ready for someone with completely different growth objectives to take over and run with.”

Although he had grown up helping with the family business, Nicolakakis was still very inexperienced. 

“I was very green, so it was just how hard could I push the pedal and just run and see what happens,” Nicolakakis said on the Big Small Business Show. 

“So there was more excitement than anything else at the time.”

Even though the business had already grown to about 28 units by the time Nicolakakis joined, the business was only run by a secretary, a warehouse manager, and one woman who did admin and accounting. 

“As soon as I joined, I just wanted to open shops because, for me, the more shops you open, the more money you make,” he explained.

His father’s first love was always serving customers, and the only real reason there were franchises was because he allowed his friends to open restaurants when they found good sites. 

For Nicolakakis, though, growing the business was his first priority. When he looked into whether potential franchisees had expressed interest, he found an entire filing cabinet full of franchise enquiries the secretary didn’t know what to do with. 

In the early 2000s, they received many franchise enquiries, and Nicolakakis had to learn how to run the business as he went. 

“I had to learn from scratch. How do we open a shop? How do we get a system in place to some degree to be able to leverage the base that we had and grow fairly rapidly?” he said.

“And unfortunately, it didn’t go very well in the beginning.”

The very first cheque Nicolakakis received was a R10,000 joining fee after signing a franchisee. 

He was incredibly proud, but when his father met the franchisee, he knew he was going to take them for a ride. Nevertheless, his father agreed to go along with it and back Nicolakakis.

“Not even a week before opening, this gentleman phones me and says he doesn’t have the capital,” Nicolakakis said.

“We had to step up and help him get the business up and running. We basically loaned him the money to buy a franchise from us. And we had to do it. The brand was more important than my mistake.”

Even though his father’s “I told you so”, came immediately, he felt very fortunate to join him in business at such a young age.

“He gave me a lot of rope, he allowed me to make many mistakes, and every time I made a mistake he just used to tell me ‘I hope you’ve learned from it. It cost you a Porsche Boxster’,” he said. 

Expanding Roman’s

The rebranding from Little Caesars to Roman’s was another challenge Nicolakakis had to face early on.

“We did our first campaign, and we physically took money out of our own pockets to fund the rebranding,” he explained.

For the first time, the business really had to focus on marketing, which Arthur had done very little of up to that point. 

They did their first radio campaign, “and sales took off”. 

“At that time, there weren’t as many marketers, there weren’t as many brands. So, the impact was far greater than it is today.”

“Marketing is critical. The current fast food space is extremely competitive in South Africa, and 50% to 60% of our sales are impulse. So you need to be front of mind.”

The biggest challenge for Nicolakakis, however, was growth. “At the time, as we started growing, I was doing everything.”

He realised that he wouldn’t be able to grow the business on his own, but in those days, a manager’s salary was about the same as a full store’s profit, which made the transition very difficult. 

“You try to learn from the market, and you try to allocate resources where you need them best, but it is challenging.”

Roman’s was built on the idea of selling high-quality products at a low price point. This meant that he had to be extremely clever in cutting costs.

One way he did this was by keeping the head office and distribution centre as minimal and functional as possible.

“We strip out all unnecessary expenses. The aim is to keep costs down, and other than our ingredients, every buying decision is made through that lens.”

Nicolakakis also did something counterintuitive to keep the costs low. At the time, all of their competitors offered free delivery services.

He saw this as unnecessary, though. Not only was it not suitable for the South African fast food model, but it was expensive and drove up the cost of the food.

His idea worked, and the affordable price points led to them having some of the busiest pizzerias in the country.

“Being green behind the ears has actually played to our fortune in many ways. We were the first branded pizzeria in the township.”

He said that any established restauranteur would have questioned how someone could go sell pizza in the township.

“I didn’t know any better. I took a gamble, and fortunately, it paid off.” For that reason, he said that it is crucial that any entrepreneur go with their gut. 

Today, Roman’s Pizza has more than 250 stores, with some selling over 2,000 pizzas per night.

“You’ve got to be able to be aggressive. You’ve got to fight for what you want in life,” Nicolakakis said.

“If you’re not going to fight, no one’s going to give it to you. So that really is the culture that we try to embody.”