Col’Cacchio’s evolution from restaurant chain to multi-channel business

What started with a fresh pizza range and a single SPAR Sea Point listing during COVID has grown into a new way for the 34-year-old restaurant brand to reach South African consumers.

For more than 30 years, Col’Cacchio has been part of South Africa’s restaurant landscape. When COVID changed the way people ate, the family-owned business had to find new ways to reach customers. One of those ideas was to take Col’Cacchio beyond the restaurant and into retail, starting with a small supermarket trial.

Its first retail customer was SPAR Sea Point, where Col’Cacchio launched a fresh pizza range. From that one listing, the retail business steadily grew, later expanding into frozen pizzas with Checkers and a broader retail presence across selected SPAR and Checkers stores, as well as Nibbly Bits stores around the country.

Col’Cacchio’s evolution from restaurant chain to multi-channel business. Image supplied by PR company.

The move is also earning recognition of its own. Col’Cacchio’s retail pizza range recently received Gold and Silver at the Food & Home Awards in the Frozen and Ready-Made Meals category. The Butternut, Feta and Pumpkin Seed Praline pizza received Gold and was named Best Pizza in the category, while the Frozen Pepperoni and Portuguese Sausage Pizza received Silver.

For Col’Cacchio, however, the awards tell a bigger story about a part of the business that did not exist before COVID.

“COVID forced us to look at our business differently,” says Etienne Pieterse, Group CEO of Col’Cacchio. “For years, people had known Col’Cacchio as somewhere they went for a meal. Retail gave us an opportunity to reach people in a completely different way. Someone could pick up a Col’Cacchio pizza while doing their grocery shopping and enjoy it at home.”

Col’Cacchio. Image supplied by PR company.

Getting a restaurant pizza into the supermarket freezer

Taking Col’Cacchio into retail was not as simple as putting the restaurant name on a box. The real challenge was making sure the pizza people knew and loved, fresh from a wood-fired oven in one of its restaurants, could still feel unmistakably Col’Cacchio once it had been frozen, taken home and cooked in someone else’s kitchen.

That connection is particularly evident in the Gold-winning Butternut, Feta and Pumpkin Seed Praline pizza. The combination is already familiar to restaurant customers through Col’Cacchio’s Norm’s Pralina pizza, bringing flavours from the restaurant menu into the retail range.

“For us, the important part was that retail couldn’t feel like a watered-down version of the restaurant brand,” says Pieterse. “The occasion is different, but the expectation from the customer isn’t. If it carries the Col’Cacchio name, it still has to be something we’re proud to put in front of people.”

A different place at the dinner table

Retail now sits alongside a restaurant business operating across South Africa, Namibia and Mauritius, as well as the group’s Col’Cacchio GO brand and its delivery offering. Retail hasn’t replaced the restaurant business; it’s simply given customers another way to enjoy Col’Cacchio at home.

A customer might visit a restaurant for dinner one week, order delivery the next, and pick up a frozen Col’Cacchio pizza while doing their grocery shopping another.

“We don’t see restaurant and retail as competing occasions,” says Pieterse. “It’s about giving consumers more ways to have Col’Cacchio. Sometimes that’s dinner inside one of our restaurants and sometimes it’s opening the freezer at home on a Wednesday night. We want to be able to be part of both.”

Etienne Pieterse, Group CEO of Col’Cacchio. Image supplied by PR company.

The move into retail comes as Col’Cacchio continues to receive recognition across the wider business. The group was named Best Restaurant Chain in South Africa at the 2026 South African

Restaurant Awards, retaining the title it won in 2025, and recently received a SuperSAKE Award at the 2026 ontbytSAKE Toekennings.

For Pieterse, however, the significance of the retail story goes back to where it started.

“Winning Gold and Silver is a great acknowledgement for the team, but I think what we’re most proud of is what sits behind it,” he says. “This started at a time when we were trying to find new ways to reach our customers. To see it grow from one retail listing into something people are now actively choosing for their homes is incredibly rewarding.”

What began as a way to keep reaching customers during an extraordinary period for South Africa’s restaurant industry has now become an established part of the Col’Cacchio business.