When Mario’s Pizze­ria opened its doors in June 1972 it was the first piz­za par­lour in this coun­try.

“Fifty years ago piz­za was a new food item. It was large­ly un­known to the pop­u­la­tion of T&T so in the ear­ly days, the cam­paigns and pro­mo­tions were about build­ing aware­ness and in­tro­duc­ing the new prod­uct,” chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of Mario’s Pizze­ria Roger Har­ford told the Busi­ness Guardian.

But times have changed since then.

“To­day piz­za is a sta­ple through­out the world and there is a lot of for­eign com­pe­ti­tion that has en­tered the lo­cal mar­ket over the last 25 years,” Har­ford ex­plained.

De­spite the chang­ing land­scape, how­ev­er, Har­ford said Mario’s has been able to keep its share of the pie.

“We have been able to stand on our own and com­pete against these in­ter­na­tion­al com­pa­nies. We com­mand the largest num­ber of stores as well as the largest seg­ment of the piz­za mar­ket in the piz­za in­dus­try in T&T,” he said.

Every month Mario’s Pizze­ria serves over 150,000 cus­tomers, Har­ford re­vealed.

Mario’s has since moved from that first piz­za par­lour in Val­park to now hav­ing 21 stores na­tion­wide.

There are al­so plans to in­clude a 22nd store this year in the Aranguez area, Har­ford said.

Like oth­ers, Mario’s has not been spared the brunt of the on­go­ing glob­al ris­ing food prices.

“We have been af­fect­ed by glob­al ris­ing prices as much as 15 per cent in­crease in the cost of raw ma­te­ri­als. In some items as high as 100 per cent but on av­er­age we are see­ing a 15 per cent in­crease across our costs,” he said.

So far cus­tomers have been in­su­lat­ed from these ris­ing costs.

“It has been quite dif­fi­cult to man­age be­cause we have not been able to pass that in­crease on to our con­sumers be­cause of the high lev­el of com­pe­ti­tion,” he said.

What has hap­pened over the last six months how­ev­er is that Mario’s has had to re­duce the num­ber of dis­counts they have been able to of­fer cus­tomers.

“I fear that soon we will not be able to con­tin­ue to hold pric­ing with the con­tin­ued ris­ing of food costs,” Har­ford said.

Har­ford added that the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and the re­stric­tions put in place to stop its spread ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

In 2020 Mario’s was closed for five weeks. Last year they were closed for 13 weeks.

“So hav­ing our busi­ness to­tal­ly shut down for that pe­ri­od of time had a tremen­dous im­pact on our fi­nan­cial ca­pa­bil­i­ties to con­tin­ue with our com­mit­ments,” Har­ford said.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, he said staff had to be tem­porar­i­ly laid off as a re­sult.

Mario’s how­ev­er sup­port­ed staff through the shut­downs with week­ly stipends and ham­pers as of­ten as pos­si­ble.

Har­ford told the Busi­ness Guardian staff played an in­te­gral role in Mario’s reach­ing its gold­en an­niver­sary.

Mario’s Pizzeria Ltd chairman and founder Richard Harford, left, with his son CEO Roger Harford at the company’s El Socorro head office.

ANISTO ALVES

“Our loy­al staff who has stuck with us for the last 50 years, many of our se­nior man­age­ment has been with the com­pa­ny for 30 plus years. They have seen the growth we have gone through, they have grown with us,” he said.

Har­ford him­self has seen the or­gan­i­sa­tion grow be­fore his eyes. And grown with the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

He is the son of Mario’s co-founder Richard Har­ford.

Ac­cord­ing to the his­to­ry of Mario’s “on his re­turn from work­ing in Cana­da, Richard be­gan to ex­plore the en­tre­pre­neur­ial pos­si­bil­i­ties with­in the lo­cal busi­ness mar­ket. Af­ter sur­vey­ing the land­scape, Richard de­cid­ed up­on a restau­rant with close friend, Roger Gib­bon. At about the same time that the friends be­gan their search for a lo­ca­tion, an ice cream shop at the Val­park Shop­ping Plaza was of­fered up for sale. The duo grabbed the op­por­tu­ni­ty and pur­chased the busi­ness as a joint ven­ture.”

Richard and Gib­bon each in­vest­ed $4,000, go­ing in­to busi­ness as part­ners of a deli-style restau­rant sell­ing sand­wich­es, roti and drinks.

With­in months of open­ing the deli at Val­park, Richard was per­suad­ed to serve piz­za in­stead of sand­wich­es and roti.

Friends of Richard—Col­in D’Ar­cy, Ver­non Charles and Trevor Acanne—had re­turned from stud­ies in Cana­da with a piz­za oven in tow.

The friends per­suad­ed Richard that a piz­za par­lour would be a far more lu­cra­tive ven­ture than a run-of-the-mill sand­wich shop. Piz­za had been a sta­ple food of the friends’ di­et while on cam­pus and they had be­come quite pro­fi­cient at prepar­ing it.

D’Ar­cy, Charles and Acanne con­vinced Richard and Gib­bon to turn the sand­wich shop in­to Trinidad’s first lo­cal piz­za par­lour.

The five friends band­ed to­geth­er to form Mario’s Pizze­ria Ltd and Richard Har­ford was ap­point­ed the store man­ag­er.

Even­tu­al­ly, when busi­ness slowed down, Gib­bon, D’Ar­cy, Acanne and Charles of­fered Richard and an­oth­er mu­tu­al friend Vic­tor Pereira the op­tion of buy­ing them out.

Richard then be­came the proud own­er of 50 per cent of Mario’s Pizze­ria Ltd.

Pereira would soon sell all of his shares to Richard when Trinidad’s econ­o­my start­ed to swing south.

De­spite the grim out­look, Richard’s de­ter­mi­na­tion, and pas­sion for qual­i­ty prod­ucts and high stan­dards main­tained the pop­u­lar­i­ty and the slow but steady growth of Mario’s Pizze­ria.

Richard now sits as the chair­man of Mario’s Pizze­ria Ltd.

Mario’s Pizzeria Ltd’s first outlet located at the Valpark Shopping Plaza in Valsayn.

ANISTO ALVES

“Fifty years is a huge mile­stone in any or­gan­i­sa­tion,” Har­ford said.

“I grew up in the busi­ness from as young as I could re­mem­ber I have been in­volved in some way or fash­ion fol­low­ing be­hind my dad to vis­it stores, go­ing with him to the mar­ket to buy veg­eta­bles on week­ends. Grow­ing up go­ing to school hav­ing friends come over,” he said.

While the 50th an­niver­sary was passed with on­ly a con­grat­u­la­to­ry post on so­cial me­dia, Har­ford said the cel­e­bra­tions will take place this Sat­ur­day.

“We cel­e­brate na­tion­al piz­za day on the sec­ond Sat­ur­day of every June which is ba­si­cal­ly in com­mem­o­ra­tion of our An­niver­sary. So na­tion­al piz­za day has been a mar­ket­ing cam­paign that we have cre­at­ed over 15 years ago and it has grown each year,” he said.

“Na­tion­al piz­za day is like our cus­tomer ap­pre­ci­a­tion day we have lots of spe­cials, give-aways and ac­tiv­i­ties for chil­dren and the fam­i­ly to come in-store and en­joy piz­za along with our oth­er menu items,” Har­ford said.

Har­ford said Mario’s has utilised so­cial me­dia plat­forms to help its mar­ket­ing and reach out to cus­tomers.

Un­der Har­ford’s ini­tia­tive, the Mario’s Piz­za Face­book Fan page was launched in 2009 well ahead of lo­cal com­pe­ti­tion.

The chain quick­ly ex­pand­ed in­to oth­er pop­u­lar so­cial net­works in­clud­ing most re­cent­ly In­sta­gram and Tik Tok.

“So­cial me­dia is a sta­ple in our ad­ver­tis­ing bud­get. We have seen our mi­gra­tion from tra­di­tion­al me­dia to so­cial me­dia and dig­i­tal ad­ver­tis­ing,” he said.

Har­ford thanked staff, cus­tomers and fans for their con­tin­ued sup­port over the last 50 years and said that Mario’s looks for­ward to con­tin­u­ing to pro­vide its piz­zas and meal op­tions far in­to the fu­ture.

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