Sean Geddes eyes bigger slice of pizza action

By DOMINIC JEFF
Published on 18/10/2012 00:00

SCOTLAND’S largest Domino’s Pizza franchise has moved its banking from Royal Bank of Scotland to HSBC and secured £600,000 funding for its expansion programme.

Entrepreneur Sean Geddes, whose company Dominoid has 14 outlets north of the Border and employs 340 people, is also expanding into Germany.

Since opening his first outlet in Dundee in 2001, he has mostly financed the expansion through cash generated by the business, taking what he describes as “a Scottish approach to debt”.

However, he said the speed at which the company’s growth was now moving meant some borrowing was necessary.

The bank facility will be used to open another Scottish outlet next year, and perhaps buy an existing franchise in order to facilitate the group’s geographical expansion outwards from its east-coast heartland, he said.

“We don’t want to start leapfrogging territories because then we wouldn’t get the economies of scale and ease of management,” he said.

Dominoid will be able to grow much faster in Germany, where it is Domino’s first franchisee. The company has several of its own stores in Berlin, but has given Geddes free rein in the area around Aachen and Cologne.

He is opening his second store there today and plans to invest €1.1 million (£900,000) of his own money into the German operation in order to reach seven stores by the close of 2013.

He said the area he was currently operating in had about nine million inhabitants and the German franchises could become as large as his Scottish business.

The decision to change banks was not made because of the loan offered by HSBC, he said. He said HSBC had helped the German team with local market knowledge and were assisted in sourcing a suitable German banking partner.