Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to the Q1FY26 earnings conference call hosted by Jubilant FoodWorks Limited. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen only mode and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by requesting star then zero on your touch-tone phone. I hand the conference over to Mr. Baldev Mall from Jubilant FoodWorks Limited. Thank you and over to you, sir.
Thank you so much.
Meera, welcome to Jubilant FoodWorks Quarter 1 FY26 earnings call for investors and analysts.
We are joined today by senior members of the management team.
He lauds our Chairman.
Our CEO, and really the CEO of Jubilant FoodWorks’ business.
Our CFO, Suman Hegde. We will commence with three thoughts from our Co-Chairman and then turn to our CEO. We will commence its key thoughts from.
Our core CNM and turn to our CEO and MD to share his perspective after the opening remarks from the management.
The forum will be open to question and answer session.
A cautionary note.
Some of the statements here on today's.
Call could be forward looking in nature.
The actual results could vary from the statement. We will also share the replay and transcript of the call on the company's website.
Website under the Investor Relations section. I would now like to invite Mr.
Hari Bhartia to share his views with you. Over to you, sir. Thank you. Good evening, everyone, and thank you for joining us on our Q1 FY26 call. I am pleased to share that Jubilant FoodWorks' has delivered a very strong start to FY26 despite a challenging demand environment. We expect the demand environment to improve quarter on quarter going forward. Our results reflect the strength of our consumer franchise, execution, and strategic choices. We remain focused on protecting our core value proposition affordability, quality, and convenience while driving operational efficiency. We continue to expand our footprint, adding 71 new stores during the quarter and taking our total network to 3,387 stores across countries in which we operate. This expansion aligns with our long-term strategy and reflects our confidence in our brands and markets.
Consolidated revenue for the quarter stood at INR 2,260 crore, marking a 17% year on year growth and an impressive like-for-like growth of 11.6% year on year for Domino's. Our continued focus on cost and productivity is yielding results with Pre-Ind AS EBITDA margins improving year on year. We are also seeing fantastic response to our new innovative product offerings. Lunch Feast, Chicken Sides, and Big Big Pizza launched in the second half of FY25 are doing very well with consumers internationally. Our QSR business continues to navigate a high inflation environment with agility and resilience. The business has generated healthy free cash flows and strong profitability. By next quarter, we will start funding the cost of acquisition stake from Turkey. This is an important milestone for us. Jubilant Food Works performance is a result of disciplined execution and high performance culture across the organization.
We are building a durable, future-ready business, one that balances growth with resilience and innovation with discipline. As we move forward, our focus remains clear to deliver competitive, sustainable performance by staying true to our purpose and values. We remain committed to delivering long-term value and embracing the opportunities ahead with the same bold spirit that has defined our journey so far. With that, I will now invite our Managing Director and CEO, Sameer Khetarpal, to take you through the operational and financial performance in great detail. Thank you Mr. Bhartia and good evening everyone. The last quarter has been nothing short of exceptional for Jubilant Food Works. Our teams have executed brilliantly, delivering results against odds, exceeding both our internal targets and our commitment to you, our investors, across every brand and geography. Our strategy is delivering compounding results.
We have accelerated menu innovation, rapidly grown the scale of our own digital assets, made decisive progress towards 20-minute delivery, sharpened our focus on growth and margins in Domino’s India, scaled Popeyes towards becoming India’s most loved chicken brand, and generated healthy cash from operations in our business in Turkey. On every one of these fronts, the quarter stands out as one of our best. Let me talk about the growth highlights. First, group system sales reached INR 2,671 crore, powered by strong consumer engagement across brands and markets. We added 71 new stores this quarter, expanding our network to 1,387 stores across our markets. Domino’s India led the way with 61 new stores and is now present in 484 cities—a clear reflection of our confidence in the long-term growth potential of the Indian QSR market without losing sight of short-term opportunities.
Consolidated revenue grew 17% year on year to INR 2,261 crore, while standalone revenues grew 18.2% year on year to INR 1,702 crore. Domino's India delivered an impressive 17.7% revenue growth, driven by 17.3% order growth and 11.6% like-for-like growth. Our third consecutive quarter of double-digit like-for-like growth, delivery like-for-like growth stood at 20% even with the full impact of pre-delivery now in the base. Mature store AUVs reached a new high of 85,396, reflecting strong throughput and operational excellence. Delivery channel grew by 24.6% year on year, while dine-in also increased after a long time by 2.5%. Supported by targeted consumer initiatives on profitability and margin discipline, we continue our approach to cost reduction and capital allocation. On Pre-Ind AS basis, the EBITDA grew by 18.2% to INR 292 crore, with margins at 13.9%.
Standalone pre-Ind AS EBITDA rose ahead of revenue by 22.5% year-on-year to INR 205 crore, with margin expansion of 42 basis points to 12%. Gross margin dipped due to a deliberate value-added pricing mix shift, seasonality at year-end, and the overwhelming success of Big Big Pizza. These actions drove superior growth and stronger new customer acquisition while protecting overall margins through operating leverage and strict cost discipline. On a post-Ind AS basis, interest costs declined 17.6% year-on-year due to better debt management and working capital efficiency, further strengthening profitability and cash flows. Effective capital management has led to meaningful bottom-line improvement. Consolidated and standalone PATs grew by 59.8% and 29.5%, respectively. On innovation and digital engagement, for non-veg lovers, we launched Chicken Burst Pizza this quarter a new format that’s already gaining traction and building on our Cheesy Platform range.
Our digital ecosystem continues to scale with monthly active users of about 15 million, up 21.5% year on year. App installs are up 19.4% to 12.3 million and loyalty members at 37 million, up 48.6%. The metrics reflect our ability to drive consumer engagement, powered by our technology. Popeyes momentum is now strong with double-digit FSE growth in South Indian market and improving restaurant profitability both year on year and quarter on quarter. We have now expanded to West with healthy pipelines for Q2. Our investments in the business in Turkey are delivering exactly as intended as accretive, cash positive and high ROT. The business reported INR 519 crore in revenue with a 9.4% PAT margin. While like-for-like growth was moderated by CPI price lag, order volume grew healthy and profitability improved through cost discipline and capital management.
Coffee in Turkey now operates in 38 cities with 167 cafes, winning on value and service. Overall, I sum up the performance as we are agile today, ready for challenges and building a multi-brand, consumer-first food tech enterprise. The focus is clear: growth and profitable goals, acceleration of innovation, digital leadership and operational excellence. With strong momentum across all our brands and markets, we enter the new quarter with confidence and conviction to do better. With that, I request the moderator to commence the Q&A session. Thank you very much. We now begin with the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press Star and 1 on the telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you must press Star and 2. For better audio clarity, all participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question.
Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the questions assemble. The first question is from Percy Panthaki from ISL Securities. Please go ahead. Hi sir, my question is it's been like two and a half years since we have taken any price hikes now. Our SSSG also has sort of stabilized over the last two to three quarters at a double digit kind of a number. What is really holding us back from taking a price right now? Yeah, good question. I think in few calibrated places we are taking price increases, firstly. What you see over here is our order, like our LFI growth in value terms, is slightly ahead of order growth. That's what I mentioned. It is happening. I want all of our investors and analyst friends to step back.
We are here trying to build a INR 5,000 crore franchise, a 5,000 store franchise. I think this is the time where it penetrates more. It gets the throughput per store and the leverage is coming in three India's basis. It is very easy to take price hike at this stage. I get several proposals every day on my tables. I am moving in for growth and I can see the profitability improving at a Pre-Ind AS level, hopefully at post-Ind AS, and whatever gross margin decline we have, we are seeing actually the leverage coming in supply chain and multiple other places.
What you are saying you will take.
It is at the right time. We know where to take it. We have done the food analytics, but we'll pull the trigger when we have.
Just to add on that first page, inflation is not really that high here, right. It is still a benign thing. While yes, we might look at daily inflation, there are many other components of the food commodity basket which we play with. Inflation is not very high. That is not really what's coming and taking the process.
Sorry to interrupt you, but you're losing your audio a little bit. Yeah.
All right, thank you.
My second question is on the loyalty plan. Now it's been fairly long since we have launched it. We are hoping that you can share some more data on this. I understand you do share sort of the number of customers and stuff like that. What I'm really looking at is that for a customer who has enrolled in a loyalty plan, how has his behavior changed versus when he was not in the loyalty plan? Does his EOV increase, does his frequency increase? If you can share some kind of numbers or some kind of data on that, it will be really helpful. I will share three things, three points over here. Firstly, our own assets are growing the fastest, right. Loyalty has a role to play over there. Second is frequency has begun to move up. Last year we put pre-delivery, we acquired at an unprecedented pace.
When we calculate frequency, we calculate total number of orders divided by total number of customers, including new customers. That number is beginning to go up. Third is the cohort, right. In the Cheesy Rewards loyalty program, after earning six pies you get a free pizza. That cohort keeps seeing the partial growth. I'm giving you an analytical but a qualitative answer on all three examples without revealing the numbers. Loyalty program is genuinely working and is one of the important components of driving our own digital asset growth. I understand what I'm okay, I'm not looking for numbers, but if you can tell me. See, loyalty has two or three benefits. One is that it can help recruit new customers. Secondly, it can help increase the AOV of the existing customer, and third, it can help increase the frequency of ordering.
If you were to rank these three benefits in terms of ascending order, which is giving you the most of the benefits and which is contributing to the lesser part of the overall benefits? That is what I was just looking at without any numbers. The biggest benefit of the reward program is the long-term value of loyal customers. It is not AOV, it is AOV x frequency of the loyal customers. For our average frequency, it is about three. Cheesy Rewards kick in at six. It fundamentally attracts customers who love Domino's, who love pizza, and when they're making the choice, this is one of more factors, one of additional factors other than delivery innovation, the highest quality of fees, etc., to come back to Domino's. So where it is attacking is long term value of customers who is four plus times the feed draft. Understood.
Lastly, if I might squeeze in one question. See, we started doing this double digit LFL from Q3 last year, so you have one more quarter of relatively low days when we hit the high base of Q3. When we do hit that Q3 high base, how do we think of the yoy LFL going from there on? Would you say that you would endeavor to maintain the high growth irrespective of this, or do you think the base effect does matter? If it does, how much of an impact could that make? I will give the same answer what I gave last quarter. This does matter, right. I think again I will request you to step back at a four quarter now like these double digit like-for-like growth. We will be expanding to the theme of the store in terms of operations, right? That's what we are seeing, right.
I think the team have done a great job of sweating the assets, using the thing, doing lesser number of splits, and growing the same store. I think at some level splits will increase and will be obviously our payback period ROIs. Those will be intact, right? From a base perspective, I think what is again I will draw your attention to why are we growing, right? It is not just the base effect. We have done five things right. We expanded the pace of innovation. We invested heavily in digital assets. We did free delivery in top metros. We had the best in terms of 20 minute delivery. Lastly, we have like expanded the teams on the ground to have daily rigor, right. Like this for example this Raksha Bandhan. It was raining heavily.
We exceeded all our expectations and yet delivery metrics came ahead of what we were internally anticipating on day like that. There's combination of factors. It is not just base and therefore we are riding on the base. I'm very confident the measures we have taken could take us beyond the base also. That's all from me. Thank you and all the rest. Thank you very much. Next question is from Reynold Nihar Zam from ISL Securities . Please go ahead. Yes. Hi Sameer and team. Good evening. Two questions from my side. The first is on the delivery binance divergence of yesterday. Even if I look at our dine in channel we've obviously launched the 99 under 149 value niche. There is a clear packed chase of value and all the other five as per the minimums and other delivery charge being very much a part of the channel also.
What is this that is driving such a big divergence in the two channels and if you say allocated to the delivery charge, is it that that has had the maximum impact among the five elements that you highlighted right now? Firstly, eating at your home from QSR, whether through a carryout or through delivery, is a worldwide trend, right, and aggregators have obviously accelerated, Covid boosted it, and consumers are looking to eat at home more and more. The QSR food, which stands for value, so that trend is intact. That is driving one of it. When it comes to delivery accuracy, delivery comfort, ease of ordering, value that we give, these are underlying factors that are fueling the delivery. If I'm pressed for time, which is happening more and more in our cities as we are becoming more urban, more nuclear, those underlying demographic trends are there.
That is what is fueling delivery on dine-ins. The way I want to just select the understanding over here, Nihal, in humility, see our on-premise includes dine-in and takeaway. Yes, a customer can come in. I want to eat there. Just eating at the restaurant is also growing at 20%. We don't disclose dine-in and carryout. It is the carryout business that is, because of free delivery, has moved. Otherwise, there was an incentive for a customer to save INR 45 to INR 50 when the delivery charge is over there. With free delivery, I did give a little bit of a positive undertone on dining; at least it is growing at a full system level, not declining.
The reason is, as we see here, the bases are actually helping, but overall our dine-in, trust me, has been one of the best in terms of the customer input, has been the best in the last three or four years.
Just to clarify, you did say that.
Leave apart the takeaway business which you highlighted earlier, the dine-in growth has been very strong, very close to what the delivery growth has been. That's correct. That's very helpful. My second question, which is, I think, only additional one store, just thoughts on where that brand is in terms of, I know you mentioned that 100 store is successful, where you start giving more data, but maybe the pace of addition is slightly lower. Where do you expect the store addition to scale up for the next, specifically highlighting South India? Any comments from the rest of the country on the adoption? I think the location strategy, product strategy, dealing with both dine-in and delivery, our own delivery, our own app, that strategy is very clear. I think the slower growth in the quarter is a narration, right?
We already entered Mumbai with three stores, and we are building two more stores in Mumbai. You will see the right, so we know where to open, like 150 stores. When we get the location, we will open the stores. It is more about finding the location and negotiating on the rental. Like I said, three stores in Mumbai are already open. Two are under construction. I am entering the quarters two with a reasonably healthy pipeline. That's your question. Thank you so much. Thank you. Next question is from the line of Aditra Suman from CLSA. Please go ahead. Yeah, hi, good evening and thanks for the opportunity. Two questions for me. Firstly, I just wanted to understand this GM decline a little bit better because you indicated that you're pushing the value add, but I thought that the free deliveries now are completely, should be in the base.
Secondly, even when I look at the free delivery, we are seeing the packing charge, for example, has gone up, almost fully offsetting that free delivery amount compared with what it was two quarters, specifically the six quarters ago. I just want to understand this gross margin decline. The second question is just overall also in terms of profitability for the standalone business. If I look at the EBIT or PAT over the three-year, five-year period, it's basically we've seen no growth impact over a three-year period. It's a double-digit decline in profit. How does one address this, even that we've got very strong SSG, very strong top line numbers now, but the profitability overall against Nugget. Let me address profitability. You are seeing the effects of profitability in this. In this, like SSG in the profitability pack has grown 30% ahead of the revenue.
That is what we are also focusing on. Of course, the SSG has to flow into EBITDA impact. We are very clear about it. This is not a revenue business. I hope that addresses. Hope you looked at that number right enough, and it should improve from here. We have given that in. Over a three-year period we should improve by at least 2200 basis points on standalone basis. That guidance remains, actually, to be very honest. Now, the first question you had was on gross margins. Actually, scoping the gross margin dilution is a result of three things. One is Big Big Pizza because we knew dilutive exceeded our expectation by almost two weeks and the IPL, it was supposed to be for a limited time in IPL, for the full IPL, and also the IPL also got extended because of the border conflict. There was that aside.
Second is we had launched chicken, chicken per se. We want to increase the salience of chicken there. We have taken some calibrated price increases when we looked at the gross margin. Third is we want to grow lunch, and the INR 99 lunch is an outstanding proposition available only in Domino's. These are all very strategic interventions, and these are switching the assets. If lunch grows, we have to dial in, we have to do lesser split. It is very well calibrated, and you should look at pre-Ind AS results. The second thing which we, I think, we look at internally, not only the recipe cost or the food cost, we also look at the supply chain cost that is to deliver to the store. That is where we have seen maximum advantages.
In fact, one of the all-time lows in our history, it is almost 50 basis points of tailwind that we are getting just from our commissary and logistics operations, so we are seeing the leverage. I will not look at just a recipe for standalone and look at the overall picture, and yet we are also working to improve. Several initiatives are there, and we see an improvement trajectory in the last three months. I understand that, and thanks for the clarification. Resource Martin, so my question actually was on the PAT. The net income was actually on sort of a three-year or five-year basis. If I look at net income or EBIT because the interest cost has gone up, even the EBIT has declined at a CAGR of 11% on a three year basis while our top line has grown 11%.
I'm just trying to understand what has led to this decay and how that will improve because 200 basis points still won't take it to what it was three years ago.
Let me answer that for you, Aditya. You're absolutely right and there are two points which I want to draw attention to here. One, at the points in time when the path was what it was is the gross margin that we used to make. I think over a period of time in the last few quarters we've also said about where and how price sensitive the Indian consumer is and we're seeing that across the board, right? I mean across not only the QSR industry, if you look at any consumer-facing industry and in the environment that we operate in, in the competitive environment we operate in, much more competition than there was three, four years ago, right?
When consumers are spoiled for choice you have to be very, very efficient on your pricing and some of those margins of the past were not sustainable margins if you want to protect your consumer transfers and you want to look at the long-term value that you're creating as a brand. That's one effect which of course now they're saying once we right size it, we will improve the margins. I think of the question previously also, how are we looking at margins going forward? We will see this coming through because we know it's an impact of mix and we've invested, deliberately invested behind giving value back to the consumer. Look at customer acquisition, put value back in delivery. That's one element which has impacted the past that you've seen in the historical three years batch.
If I compare it, the second one is the depreciation and you keep the interest cost out of it. We have heavily invested behind capital investment on technology, on stores and as we have called off with a high investment cycle behind our supply chain assets, which are commissaries to support the growth that we will see going forward. Some of the capacities we've invested in are going to last for the next two to three years. Of course, the impact of that comes in the images in the depreciation line, which is what also you've seen a significant increase over. In the long term as the cycles are getting off and they're getting off that cycle in FY2026, most of the investments now will be on ROIs which are much better than manufacturing assets.
Right.
They can be buying stores. It's about two, two and a half year payback, and technology, we see the faster turnaround, which is reflecting in the growth that we are seeing. We will see this improve. Right. There are two elements, just to summarize. One is, of course, the gross margins, which we will now have in, but we did take a sharp dip on it, which is, I think, the industry across industries, important to do to get the consumer back to the call. The second is definitely, which you'll start seeing, the leisure benefits flowing through, and it's the growth, momentum, fragility.
Thanks, that's very clear. Thanks for that detail. Thank you. Next question is from Nihal Jham, from Jefferies. Please go ahead. Hi, good evening team. A couple of questions. First is on the delivery takeaway. You know what you mentioned Sameer, the way which you report, let's combine it together. The last, you know, the previous quarter, fourth quarter you almost, you know, came to 0 to 1%. This quarter, 3%. Do we expect this to, you know, or should we expect this to pick up as we go forward? Forward because one, of course the base is there plus the initiative that you have also been, you know, undertaking. That's the first part of the question and where do you think delivery plus, you know, takeaway settles in the medium term?
I think the first question is yes, I think we are working for while we execution or delivering is a fill with the team try to reduce the demand. Shaping the demand on dynamic is something that we do very rigorously and a lot of efforts have gone in. I think you will continue to see the results in my opinion. Therefore, from neutralizing to plus 2.5% to 3% to 5% to 6% is what we are internally targeting. Right. It should improve but the mix of there is a huge tailwind on delivery, Vivek. The more supply we are able to create on delivery side, there is enough and more demand with weather vagaries, with traffic, with consumers like habit changing with apps, with bank hawkers. I think the growth momentum is there on the delivery side.
It is more you have to supply these ready at the right point at the right cost. I don't know the answer to the question number two to be very honest. The way I look at it is I want the customer to have a great choice with us. We should be available in on all channels. Our own app should offer the best, most immersive pizza eating or pizza ordering experience. Our stores, which are neighborhood stores, there'll be like what maybe 50, 70 stores in Gurgaon alone. In that kind of a setup, if somebody wants to eat in takeaway, that's how we are building the business and we genuinely want to shape the demand towards dine in because it is accretive to the P&L. Right. Just a follow up, let's say deliveries today at about, you know, 73%.
So basically if, let's say, this number goes higher and higher, does that need any change in, you know, you think you are the way in which you are building stores, the way in which, you know, you are staffing stores and so on and so forth. In the medium term, you don't envisage this number going up from the level that we are currently today. Yeah, nothing. We are constantly monitoring. The 73% is an average. There will be stores with 100% also, there will be stores with less than 10% also. In urban centers, when we specifically set a store, we try to go with a delivery and carryout store. This is about an 800-900 sq ft store. In rural areas or in tier 3, tier 2, we are opening up 1,500 stores because there the dine-in takeaway is more than 50% or closer to 50%.
We are already calibrating and we are seeing what happened two years ago. At the moment, for example, if any property is more than 1,500 sq ft, we actually say no. We don't want it. It doesn't add value. We know the business ultimately will shift towards our customers' preferences, will shift towards dine-in even in tier 2, tier 3 cities. We are calibrating a lot of that and getting tighter on the property and the real estate that we have. Got it. We are not going to open that store. I just want to start seeing. Okay, got it. The other thing is, quite frankly, every time that we are on the call, there are a lot of questions on the margins. I totally appreciate the fact that you are going after growth even if it is gross margin dilutive.
At least EBITDA margin numbers are showing that you are building business from a medium term, not long term, but just because there is so much concern on margins. Do you think on the gross margin side, this quarter has been, I think, one of the lowest? Do you think you are at the bottom on gross margins? That is the first part of the question. The second part is, if you still have to dissect the, let's say, 200 basis point decline at standalone, how much of this would be because of promotion versus, let's say, new products which are margin dilutive? I genuinely believe, again I can be wrong, but I genuinely believe that this is an aberration. I do see margins improve, gross margins improve. Having said that, I also want you to notice that our supply chain cost has been lowest ever.
Actually, the delivered food cost to the store is not as bad as what you're seeing just on the recipe cost. That's one. The second is the almost 75% of the lot is coming from the new product that I spoke about. I think the sales exceeded our expectation on all three of them, and therefore we have gone back in second. For example, chicken price. We are celebrating that. I don't think they will go down any further. In my opinion, they could ideally improve. Okay. Sorry, just one follow up. Why do you say something? There is an aberration in this line item. Because some of the changes I think work together, like I said, like the Big Big Pizza exceeding our internal estimate, IPL getting extended. It didn't, like we were, we were positively surprised by that. Chicken, for example, in South India exceeded our internal target.
For example, in chicken, we have gone back and corrected the price on Big Big Pizza. We are now actually re-engineering the product to see can we get more gross margins. That can be how do we make it more efficient? Can we do few things in the factory? Can we make the core operation a little more leaner? Those things are under way. That's why I feel more confident we know, and then controlling like operations in store. As the throughput increases, we're using technology to map the store, to map the inventory. Lot of effort. In fact, I'm personally spending enormous amount of time in digitizing our supply chain. Those are the pieces where the wastage, delivery cost to store, inventories, excesses, those things are released in chunk, which is also sitting in the gross margin pricing. I'm very varied. I just don't want to go on record.
Taking price increases is going to be very calibrated, and going for growth and growth should give me leverage in the strategy. Thank you and wishing you all the best. Thank you. Next question is from the line of Jaya Dothi from Kotak. Please go ahead. Yeah. Hi. Thanks for the opportunity. My first question is, you know, when you introduce Cheesy Volcano, the introductory price was versus other products or similar products. Then you did the same with Big Big Pizza and the new Chicken Burst Pizza. When you actually roll back the introductory price or take price increases, do you see the same level of friction in these innovations or it tapers off? That's my first question. You're right. I think it's a loaded question. It's a very intelligent question. I think consumers today are very savvy.
They know where, how to compare the prices and AI is only helping them get faster. Earlier they used to take seven minutes to compare across five apps and all the stores. Now the AI is actually producing. Price increases are going to be harder for the industry. When we retake the price, it's immediately all the elasticity. Hello, is this, is this Becca? Yes sir. Can you hear us? Yes, yes, you can hear it now. Yeah. Consumers are very smart. They have more tools to do price benchmarking. Price increases have to be very calibrated, very thoughtfully done in a scientific, analytical manner with proper A/B testing over at least 13, 14 weeks. That's what we do. In a few cases like Voipiano Pizza, we have taken price increases. In Big Big Pizza, we did take price increase but we saw massive elasticity against us.
We'll roll back where we have to, we have to change. The focus on gross margin continues, and through more efficient use and smarter use of analytics to get more in the bank. One more follow up there. Is there any possibility for you to consider platform fees? Food aggregators are now, you know, I am dead against that today. I have seen this play out like almost 15 years of my life. You do get a bump in one quarter, two quarters, right. Our own app is growing for a reason, right, because we kept it simple, we kept it transparent pricing . It's very easy to do it, right. All of what you are suggesting, we can do it like tomorrow morning. It's hard to build long term businesses on customer trust where you are tightening your own belt and not passing to them.
We are going in for that. That's a clear strategy. All the levers you are suggesting, you have it in the back pocket and technology is ready. I can do it from midnight to noon o from night to morning . Last one on Popeyes. Now, at the investor day you indicated you need another three to six months to streamline a few things for Popeyes. Your last week's small interview on CNBC, you appeared, sounded more confident. Could you give us sort of an update of what progress Popeyes has made in the last six months and how do you look at the expansion plans, growth, from the next 12 months perspective? I think we've made tremendous progress in the last six months. Five things have happened over there. Firstly, we have seen focus on building the team. Right.
In fact, I would say what Domino's team, we did about two, three years ago with splitting of region, getting physical digital leaders. We have replicated the same playbook even just with 60 odd stores. Second is ruthlessly focused on getting the delivery infrastructure. It's very hard to do for a 60 store network, which is the patchy coverage even the city, right. We've gotten that. These continue combined with the Domino's team, which does reach like 40,000 prices in a day at stage, and we are building four and more technology to combine it. That is number two, excuse me. Third is the unfortunately strength line with the 60 restaurant managers every quarter telling them what is important along with the leadership team. We tell them we are building the business in a very like a startup. The fourth is getting the unit economic rise.
A lot of effort was gone in on measurement, food costs, a lot of capex reduction, supply chain capacity buildup, automation in supply chains. I feel very confident that now we are beginning to invest in marketing. Take for example, we were very under indexed on bucket and we've gone back and fixed that. We fixed the core value proposition. How will we differentiate as a brand in this sweatered market and stands for the most loved chicken. For those cases, we have worked and I will see a lot of things happening. Thank you so much and wish you the best. Very best. Thank you. Next question is from line of Manish from Investing. Yeah, thanks for doing the call. Just one question is, you know, you all are doing well despite the macros given the multiple interventions which you have done.
If you can help me understand, are they qualitatively or quantitatively, you know, how is our brand relevance on aggregators now? That'll be useful to understand, you know, how would it stick around when we reduce incentives or promotions. Thanks. Yeah, I think firstly the relevance of aggregators and our own digital assets is for the customers wanting reliable delivery and options. That is where we come in and that is one big tailwind and operational advantage we carry in our business. Therefore, we work very well with both the aggregators overall. We believe as we do mark to market our own estimates, we believe we are gaining share and we want to be there wherever customers are. If the aggregators are launching new deals, properties use separate delivery options, we want to be there.
We are looking at the customer, where the customer is and following the customer versus trying to say customer should come to me on this channel with this kind of a proposition. Would you have some data to, you know, I'm just trying to understand that when you say market share gain, you know, within the category or at a broader level or top 10 cities, any sense, you know, how would our shares track. Let's say what it was like 18 months back versus today. I see internally we don't want to share the numbers but when you look at like even the listed QSR then and look at the growth, right, revenue growth, you will get it right yourselves. Very easy to do. We do have a more scientific approach where we also go to unlisted pizza players. We obviously get market share information from aggregators.
We overlay our own internal data. I think you will be very positively surprised. See, 20% like-for-like growth in delivery alone will give you that you're gaining share. That is, I think, the single biggest data point.
Sorry if I have to think about it.
When you think about incentives, these are not, let's say, higher margins to the aggregators but more consumer incentives. This is what, when you plan to, you know, it's more targeted advertising or targeted promotion which will reduce over a period of time rather than, let's say, negotiate harder with aggregators because I'm having higher share in this end. I'm just trying to understand from a gross margin section. The gross margin has nothing to do with aggregator, channel or anything. Right. So gross margin that you see is the price we get for an order and the food cost for that order, irrespective of where it comes from. So there's nothing to do with aggregator negotiation or anything. We work very well with aggregators. We want to deeply partner with them on all their programs.
We believe they've built a strong franchise and we continue to invest our own technology, our own flows. It's quite complementary in my opinion. Thank you. Next question is from the line of Aditya Vikham from DB Securities. Please go ahead. Hi, am I audible? Yes. Hi. Thank you very much. It looks like a good job done. I had this one question to the point which someone was making. You said most of the technology investments are now writing benefits or will start typing benefits in short period of time. Right. What would be an idealistic impact on the gross margin as such?
Sorry, the what benefits?
Technology, the technology benefits, what would they transpire into? You said in next few quarters we will start seeing the impact. I just wanted to quantify it.
Okay. There are multiple areas where the technology is being deployed and you will see the implications if you want to specifically understand. Because technology on store operations that we do will of course reflect in better employee cost productivity. It will appear below the gross margin line. If you talk specifically of gross margin, where is technology being deployed? We have better conversions on our app. Right. Because of the app interventions that we are doing in terms of consumer cohorting, information that we get in terms of ensuring that there's a good uptime for consumers, cross selling that happens. You go into our app today, you'll see multiple options where we've adjusted things to help cross sell, upsell, more targeted discounting which is done based on where the consumer cohort hits in a particular location or in a particular region.
All of that helps us do better smart pricing, better discounting, and better conversion of consumers. This is what reflects your gross margin line. There is also technology investment going on behind store operations getting better, which is behind our own delivery management system, which ensures that we get good delivery executives onto the portal, which ensures that we can deliver against our DOT delivery on time promise. All of that will reflect into our below gross margin but above EBITDA line. That's the various kinds of technology, but specifically on gross margin you will see it in better and more smart pricing, better and more targeted discounting, and better conversion happening because of the app experience for the customers.
Okay. You still won't be able to quantify as to how much will our gross margin improve now that we are not going to do a lot of technology investments, or you have some sort of an estimate that you don't want to call out.
No Aditya, I think one is technology investment. It goes, investment will get depreciated, which will go below the EBITDA line. It will not come, that improvement of lesser investment in technology will not go. We do not intend to invest lesser in technologies. We only expect to get better return from that investment that we do in technology, right, which will reflect in the gross margin line. The technology investment steps and depreciations go below the EBITDA line.
Yeah, I understand the EBITDA line. I'm trying to understand what would be the impact on the revenue and everything, but based on everything which was. Right. Okay. The question is again, Sameer, you mentioned that you are very cautious, you will only take calibrated price rises because of how the Indian consumer is. Right. Is there any sort of experiment done on reducing this side which is.
Sorry Aditya, your voice is breaking up.
Apologies. No, sorry, your audio is still breaking. Give me one thing better.
Yes, please have it for the moment.
Yeah. This question was specifically to Sameer. You said you want to take a very calibrated and cautious approach when it comes to price increases, right? You have seen, and then one of the participants was trying to understand what is the trust in whenever you increase the prices. I just wanted to understand from the management perspective, are you all guys doing any experiments on the big size teaser where you're reducing the size because these are highly marginalized motives? Is there any sort of experiments or any sort of work going on that front as well? The Big Big Pizza comes with big ticket size and therefore you would leverage on the cost below gross margin line including delivery. Therefore, at a percentage it may be dilutive but in absolute terms it is accretive. That's one piece to keep in mind, right.
Second is, again, in this environment we want consumers to get more food, get more satiated and come back. We are seeing that consistently, right. Anecdotally, I'm sharing, just like my peers in the industry and many customers that I know will catch hold of me at a bus station or a rail station, and such a Big Big Pizza is such an outstanding innovation. Again, the idea is to grow the business, franchise it. At the same time, we are running almost 30 experiments as we speak on taking calibrated pricing. There are 30 initiatives being run to reduce cost, right. It is not about putting less cheese though. It is about can we get better at storage of cheese and we do better buying of cheese. Can we do better procurement of oil, can we reduce localization of corn?
I think those are the initiatives we are focused on and there are several such initiatives and I am confident the opportunity continues to exist. Plus, top line growth is giving us leverage in rentals, it is giving us leverage in the G&A cost. I remain very confident about the margin penetration also and I'm not too concerned about it. Again, on pricing, like I said, we are going in for growth. It's very easy to take whatever you are suggesting as convenience fees, increase pricing, increase packaging charges, but we are not doing it. Okay. Thank you very much Sameer. I just have one feedback for you and your team if you can. I mind us. I'm a gown and house customer and we do order it for various of our friends as well.
I think most of the numbers which are listed online for your phone are either inaccurate or don't work. If you can work and it causes a lot of refracing when you're actually ordering in between again and you're waiting for a very long period of time. If you can work with your team to ensure that the numbers that are listed on Google and your apps are at least accurate and can ensure that we reach to be stored, that probably will reduce some amount of frustration and cancellation also. I'm hoping, yeah, firstly, my sincere apologies for the poor experience here on it. I think hopefully AI will take over and then we'll not need any intervention. That's what we are building. In the meantime, please do pull it. If you can drop us an email where it is, we'll connect it in. We are already working.
Thank you for the feedback. It is very valid, and we are working on this. Thank you.
For the near future. Thank you. Next question is from the line of Sheela Rathi from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Thanks for taking my question. My first question was, Sameer, with respect to the competitive landscape, just want to understand how the trends are, and especially from the point of view of which are the areas. We have a lead on a lot of areas, delivery, be it, you know, the whole innovation. Are we seeing any catch up game being played by competition, and any specific area you want to talk about? I know you talked about the market share gains in the recent quarters, but anything in specific if you would like to call out.
I think there's nothing. I think we have Sheela here more internally obsessed with our customers than looking at competition. Of course, we do benchmark our sales, our metrics. Our teams do it so that the customers eating at Domino's or shopping at Domino's, they get the best value and the best experience. Those things we do. I think I will talk more internally that I think we have a huge pipeline of building product platforms. We continue to invest in easy platform as we call it. Therefore, lead bus pizza, non-vegetarian pizzas, you'll continue to see that growth. Huge opportunity to capture lunch. Our late night delivery has grown at a very fast double in last like nine months. We see great both customers looking for innovation in menu day pass and occasions like Raksha Bandhan and Independence Day and Friendship Day.
We are very, very bullish about the opportunity that exists with us. I only wish we can execute faster. The demand is there.
Understood. Second question and the final one, you did mention about, you know we are not looking to open dark stores, but when I look at the delivery numbers that is 70, 73% of revenues now, and you did see that in smaller towns dining is over 50% in some parts. Just want to understand in metros and tier one cities, is the delivery fare much higher and is there a case to have smaller size stores or we still think that we will continue with the kind of stores we have been opening in the past.
I think horses for courses in the larger cities like Mumbai and Gurgaon and Delhi, we tend to open smaller stores unless it's a virgin area with very few in these cities or it's a mall, for example. We do tend to open smaller stores in these cities which are more delivery centric. If a customer walks in, wants to eat rice, should get a comfortable air conditioner and any table and a chair to sit, very functional. We don't penalize that somebody wanting to come in the store has to find the store. I think she learned a lot about food is also seeing the food being made. That generates trust in the brand, versus doing 10 brands from a dark store. We are very clear on that one.
The ROIs have to work and we look at, when we give a store approval, it genuinely validates how much sign in and carry out sales will be there. On that basis, we decide the store sizes. Some smaller, I would say, have become smaller in large cities. That calibration is an ongoing one.
If you could remind us what is that number now from a square feet because about 800.
Like see, mostly when we create a store in large or urban centers, we go in for 800, 850 store, maximum 1,000. Right. We don't go definitely beyond 1,200. Right. While, like I said, in tier three, tier four, we do want to give 4,250 covered because there is demand for dining in those cities. Our standard size is 1,200. It has actually gone a little lower than that, between 1,100 and 1,200 in last 24 odd months. We are constantly calibrating that.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. Thank you very much. Next question is on the line of Latika Chopra from J.P. Morgan Chase, please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Hi Sameer. A few questions from my side. I think the first one, just taking on from calibrating store sizes, I just wanted to get a sense on capex. For you and FY26, I heard someone mentioning the committee, like capex is likely behind us. If you could give us some color on what kind of efficiencies are you building on the capex front? That's the first question.
You want to take that on?
I didn't, sorry Lakshya. Just to understand, are you asking about how the capex or the capex spend of the company will look in the years going forward, or are you specifically asking about store capex efficiency? If you could comment on the overall capex, how you're looking at this, you.
Know, for the medium term.
Okay, we are coming off a high cycle of supply chain commodity capacities like you said, but we do plan to accelerate our pace of increasing the number of stores that we open. If you recall from our investor day, we said that the plan is because we believe there's potential in the country to open the next 1,000 stores in the next three years, which will mean that there will be a higher amount of capex which will now swing towards store openings. We'll continue to invest behind the technology and of course the operations on the ground to get the backend infrastructure, be it in terms of our ERP systems, our processes, supply chain transformation.
The most tech and store opening related capex will be where it will happen, which means your return on capital employed should typically go up because the payback cycles on these investments is better. That's the way we are looking at our capex from. It will not be a dramatic recalibration or significant decrease in the capex cycle that we see over the next two, three years, but the profile of the capex which will get spent will be different and will be more faster and higher revenue generating or return generating capex. On a store capex level, how should one think about on a per store basis, on average capex? We don't really comment out on, you know, how much we spend. Again, that can vary depending on the size and place of the store, Latika. Let me just give you some numbers in terms of percentage.
Over the last three years, consistently we are seeing that number come down, like almost every year we see a 10% to 15% drop on the amount that we spend on the capex coming from scale, and as we get better on what technologies we use. The other vector that we really are looking at now is saying how much of the capex do we put in and how much can we get the landlords to invest behind, which also is a key area because it improves the ROI for all the payback on our store and also brings down the amount of capex that we spend per store, which means we can open more stores with lesser amount of money. I don't want to comment on number because numbers can vary, but sure, yeah, that's very good.
Over the last three years, in a standalone basis, actually you've spent on an annual basis INR 700 to 800 crores per annum. I'm just wondering if the steady summit is behind us and these absolute numbers and amortizations could probably moderate. I think that was what I was trying to gain. It will moderate to some extent, but like I said, won't be a material moderation because I'm just recalibrating it from supply chain commissaries to store. Understood. Capacity supply to new stores. Right. I need to also generate the return, generate the demand to ensure it and leverage the supply chain capex, which I think was the right thing to do in the medium to long term.
Yeah, understood.
The session which was, you know, in S525 I think if I recollect correctly, the drag from Popeyes from emerging formats was about 200 basis points. I saw you mentioned that Popeyes has seen sequential improvement in profitability. How should one think about this drag through? How materially can it moderate, you know, in coming years? In the next, I think again something we have mentioned, the next couple of years we are looking clearly that the drag will come down substantially, at least half the drag in the next year or 12 to 18 months. That's the plan. Right. While we continue to invest behind the Popeyes business, on both the other two brands we are materially bringing it down by improving unit economics expansion. As you can well see in the numbers we've come out with, have almost come down to a triple or stock. Right.
That's how you can calibrate it. We are looking at over the next two years to at least half the drag that we are currently seeing on the overall gross margins. Understood. Useful. Thank you so much.
Thank you. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. That was the last question. On behalf of Jubilant FoodWorks Limited, we come through today's conference. Thank you for joining us and you may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you.