McDonald's, Domino's, Yum Brands, local major Caf� Coffee Day earmark Rs 400 crore (Rs 4 billion) to expand retail presence in India.

India is likely to see the addition of at least 400 restaurants, fast food outlets and coffee joints in 2008. Food chains such as Yum Brands, McDonald's, Domino's and Caf� Coffee Day have earmarked an estimated investment of over Rs 300-400 crore (Rs 3 to 4 billion) this year in expanding their retail presence across the country.

India currently has more than 900 fast food restaurants and coffee joints.

Yum Brands, parent of the KFC and Pizza Hut fast-food chains, will add 30-40 restaurants this year.

Yum operates around 134 Pizza Hut restaurants in India and plans to scale up to 175 by 2010. Pizza Hut serves over 300,000 customers every week in India, according to its executives. It also runs 30 KFC outlets in the country and intends to add 15-20 new restaurants this year.

Yum competes with McDonald's, Domino's, Pizza Corner and local brands such as Nirulas and Haldiram in the Rs 11 billion organised food and beverage retail sector, which is growing at around 25-30 per cent annually.

Domino's Pizza India has announced an investment of Rs 220-230 crore (Rs 2.2 billion to Rs 2.3 billion) in India over the next three years for expanding its retail fast food chain and manufacturing capacities.

Pizza delivery and dine-in is a Rs 470 crore (Rs 4.7 billion) business and is growing at the rate of 35 per cent per annum. The pizza delivery segment constitutes 40 per cent of the overall market.

Domino's will add 50-60 stores this year at an investment of Rs 80-90 lakh (Rs 8 to Rs 9 million) a store. It has 148 retail outlets in the country and will double this in the next three years.

One Domino's store sells 1,500-2,000 pizzas a day on an average, according to company executives.

Likewise, global food-chain manufacturer McDonald's is planning to increase the number of outlets in India to 220 by the end of 2008.

McDonald's company executives said the company was planning an expansion at the rate of 50 to 60 new outlets every year, doubling the number by the end of 2008. The company will invest about Rs 500 crore (Rs 5 billion) in the next two-three years.

The approximate investment in developing each outlet will be about Rs 3 crore (Rs 30 million), excluding the real estate costs, and about Rs 500 crore (Rs 5 billion) will be invested for an additional 110 outlets.

McDonald's has about 123 restaurants in India.

The company would be investing close to Rs 3 crore (Rs 30 million) per outlet with an estimated investment of Rs 100 crore (Rs 1 billion) over five years. The break-even time for a McDonald's outlet is ideally between three and five years.

Cafe Coffee Day, the coffee chain owned by the Bangalore-based Amalgamated Coffee Bean Trading, has nearly 440 stores and plans to scale the number to 700 outlets at an average investment of Rs 25-30 lakh (Rs 2.5 to Rs 3 million) a store.

The company also has 40 outlets on the campuses of IT companies such as Infosys [Get Quote], Wipro [Get Quote] and Accenture. It is planning to have 80 CCD outlets on office premises and about 10 highway stores.