Joseph Han, vice president and country manager of Yum Restaurants International (Thailand) Co Ltd, yesterday demonstrates the comparison between Pizza Hut’s Cheesy Sausage Bites Pizza and The Pizza Company’s Extra Cheesy Sausage Bites Pizza launched to th

Yum Restaurants International (Thailand) Co Ltd, owner and operator of Pizza Hut restaurants, has instructed its lawyers to dispatch a written complaint to its competitor, The Pizza Company, for the alleged use of similar product concepts, names and promotions.

Yum Restaurants vice president and country manager, Joseph Han, said that various measures would be taken to ensure that its consumers and brand are completely protected.

"Pizza Hut's recipes and products are so famous that, occasionally, some impostors try to copy them and call them their own," Han said.

Pizza Hut has been in Thailand since 1980, originally through a local franchisee, the Minor Food Group.

However, Yum Restaurants International set up its own operation in Thailand to take over the Pizza Hut business after the Minor Food Group split from the brand in 2000 to launch its own pizza restaurant chain, The Pizza Company.

"We [Pizza Hut] have spent our full resources in creating our product innovations," Han said. "Those inventions and innovations have grown from consumer needs and an understanding of what consumers really want from us."

Pizza Hut has almost 12,000 restaurants in more than 100 countries.

"Those products and promotions are inventions of our parent company and other sister companies in the global Pizza Hut system," Han said. "When Yum Restaurants brought those inventions to Thailand, we found that The Pizza Company was quick to follow and frequently used very similar product names, concepts and graphics."

He gave the example of the past two promotions launched by Pizza Hut. He claimed The Pizza Company took only a short time to launch products using very similar concepts or names. In the case of "Cheesy Sausage Bites Pizza", the name and graphic used by The Pizza Company were very close to those originated by Pizza Hut.

"What The Pizza Company has done is create confusion for our consumers and destroy fair competition in the market place," Han said.

Yum Restaurants' legal counsel will make an official complaint with The Pizza Company, and hopes to receive a positive response.

"We feel that we must appeal directly to Thai consumers and urge them to 'make it smart and make it right' and stay with the true innovator," Han said. "We also sincerely hope that The Pizza Company will respect our innovations and compete fairly and squarely with us."

He said Yum Restaurants plans to frequently communicate with its Thai consumers to make sure they recognize the right pizza brand and its telephone number for home delivery.

Kwanchai Rungfapaisarn

The Nation