Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to the Q3 and 9 months FY '25 Conference Call hosted by Jubilant FoodWorks Limited. [Operator Instructions].
I now hand the conference over to Mr. Lakshya Sharma from Jubilant FoodWorks Limited. Thank you, and over to you, Mr. Sharma.
Thank you so much, Darvin. So a very good evening, everyone, and welcome to Jubilant FoodWorks Limited Q3 and 9 Months FY '25 Earnings Call for investors and analysts. We are joined today by senior members of the management team including our Chairman, Mr. Shyam S. Bhartia; our Co-Chairman, Mr. Hari S. Bhartia; CEO and MD, Mr. Sameer Khetarpal; our CEO of Turkey business, Mr. Aslan Saranga; our CFO, Ms. Suman Hegde. We will commence with key thoughts from our Co-Chairman and turn to our CEO and MD, to share his perspectives. After the opening remarks from the management, the forum will be open to question-and-answer session.
A cautionary note, some of the statements made on today's call could be forward-looking in nature, and the actual results could vary from the statement. We will also share the replay and transcript of the call on the company's website under the Investor Relations section.
I would now like to invite Mr. Hari S. Bhartia to share his views with you. Over to you, sir.
Thank you Lakshya. Good evening everyone. The quarter 3 financial year '25 are actually really a defining quarter for the company with consolidated revenue of INR 21.5 billion, aided by a very strong Domino's LFL growth of 12.5%. We have delivered an exceptional result in quarter 3. This really demonstrates the strength of focused execution of our strategy and the unwavering commitment of our team members. Our strategic framework built on 2 pillars is yielding results ahead of the market. First, strengthening Domino's.
Multiple initiatives have been taken to strengthen Domino's business. We transitioned from 4 to 7 region structure in quarter 2 last year. This made our operations more agile and enhanced team performance and effectiveness. We revitalized our brand with -- it happens only with pizza campaign to win on occasions and expand the pizza category. We redefined the delivery experience with the launch of 20-minute delivery and delivery fee waiver fundamentally enhancing the value proposition of Domino's. Accelerated pace of product innovation to continuously delight our customers. These initiatives helped us achieve new peaks and deliver a great growth momentum to the business.
In Turkey, Domino's continues to gain share and expand network. The second pillar is accelerating the path to profitability for emerging portfolio of brands. COFFY is on its way to become top 5 cafe brands in Turkey. And during the quarter, it achieved a significant milestone by becoming the first emerging brand from our portfolio to surpass 150 store mark.
In Popeyes, -- we expanded the network. We are equally focused on reaching the desired unit economics and payback periods. We are progressing well on our path. Even in the softer demand environment, we have continued to make investments for store growth and technology and absorb costs to deliver value to customers. We see this benefit in higher like-for-like growth in the Domino's business. With consumption picking up, we are confident of our growth journey.
I would now invite Sameer to provide a more detailed perspective on our operational performance and strategic initiatives.
Thank you, Mr. Bhartia, and good evening, everyone. Q3 indeed was a landmark quarter for our company, marked by record performance for Domino's business. This exceptional performance, is a testament to focus on the ground execution of our strategy and the unwavering dedication and commitment of our teams. From our food part and store to our technology and deliberating every member of DFL family played a pivotal role in delighting the customers during the countless celebration encompassing not limited to Diwali, Christmas and New Year. Their commitment to excellence fuels our success and positions us for continued growth.
Performance summary. This is a quarter of new highs, not only in revenue, but also in same-store growth, store expansion, app traffic, app conversion, customer loyalty, new customer acquisition and highest absolute EBITDA. Group system sales, a measure of overall consumer sales across our own and franchise network, which is primarily in Turkey reached INR 24.1 billion, a healthy 6% increase quarter-on-quarter.
Consolidated revenue came in at INR 21.5 billion, up 56.1% year-on-year. The organic growth came in at 19.4% while the rest is on the account of DP Eurasia sales not being in the base. Stand-alone revenue for the first time crossed INR 16 billion at INR 16.1 billion, up 18.9% year-on-year. Our total store network now comprises of 3,260 stores and net addition of 130 stores during the quarter with 67 net store additions in India and 63 in international markets.
Coming to India segment, Domino's India delivered an exceptional performance this quarter, achieving highest ever sales led by our own app, FoodTech capabilities, revenue surged 8.3% year-on-year, fueled by a very impressive 33.8% increase in orders. New customer acquisitions grew by 55%, and we have also started to see the benefits of new customers repeating and compounding happening.
LFL sales grew by a strong 12.5% year-on-year, driven by strong delivery-led LFL growth of 24.7%. Matured store ADS achieved a new high of less than INR 86,000. I am also delighted with the enhanced pace of innovation -- product innovation and proud of how operationally complex products like Cheese Volcano are being rated very highly by customers and delivered to customers inside the stores and in their homes.
During the quarter, we introduced 3 new flavors of popular cheese burst range, further enhancing our pizza credentials and cheese portfolio. Learning from U.S. and other Domino's markets suggest a strong salience of chicken items along with the pizza. We are materially underindexed on this salience and hence, we see as a...
[Operator Instructions].
My sincere apologies, the line got disconnected. I'll start from where I believe we got disconnected. I'm also delighted with the enhanced pace of product innovation, and proud how operationally complex products like Cheese Volcano are being rated very highly and doing very well on delivery.
During the quarter, we introduced 3 new flavors of our popular cheese burst range, further enhancing the [ Ts ] of cheese. Learning from U.S. and other Domino's markets suggest a strong salience of chicken items along with pizza. We are materially underindexed on the salience and hence, we see an opportunity to unlock this platform.
Like pizza, wings and other chicken and cheese items are shareable and add to higher ticket and customer repeats. We are patiently -- we were patiently perfecting the customer value proposition in South India and now have launched the chicken range nationally starting at INR 99, along with an ATL campaign. We believe this new range will drive incremental occasions and help us serve new customers. Our digital engagement continues to grow quarter-on-quarter with nearly 14 million monthly active users on Domino's India app, app install also saw an impressive 28.6% year-on-year growth, reaching around 12 million.
To help you further appreciate the scale of our rider management platform in December, we had 46,700 monthly active riders, which was up by 50% from last December, helping us meet high customer demand and improved delivery performance. This underscores the power of our digital platform to manage variable peak load and allowing us to deliver under 20 minutes. We are progressing well against our network guidance. We opened 60 net new stores for Domino's in India this quarter, and entered 19 new cities ending with a total network of 2,139 stores now serving customers in 466 cities. The competitive intensity continues to be strong along with inflationary pressures.
The gross margin came in at 75.1%, lower by 160 basis points year-on-year on account of higher food costs for some of our new product launches, inflation and high competitive intensity leading to higher discounting during Diwali and big days. And increase in delivery charges as the demand for delivery costs as the demand for riders increased during peak season. Stand-alone EBITDA reached INR 3.1 billion up 10.6% year-on-year with an EBITDA margin of 19.4%, lower by 145 basis points year-on-year and flat quarter-on-quarter.
Importantly, we are getting the leverage as indicated by the pre-Ind AS 116 EBITDA at 12.4% is improved continuously since the last 4 quarters and is higher by 75 to 70 basis points quarter-on-quarter. While we do not separately disclose brand-wise EBITDA, we would like to mention that the like-for-like growth is providing leverage to Domino's P&L, which registered a mid-teen growth year-on-year despite free delivery and growth investments.
Moving to International segment. DP Eurasia i.e. operations in Turkey, Azerbaijan and Georgia. System sales reached INR 7.5 billion with Domino's 30 contributing to INR 6.7 billion. followed by COFFY system sales at INR 801 million. I am excited to share with you that DP Eurasia revenue crossed a milestone of INR 5 billion for the first time, registering a strong 9.5% quarter-on-quarter growth.
We believe the economy in Turkey is headed in the right direction as the government has brought down inflation from 64.9% a year back to 42%. However, this has also led to lower wage revisions in high inflationary environment, wage revisions trigger an immediate consumption boost. Despite these headwinds, the team in Turkey delivered competitive growth. Domino's Turkey like-for-like sales came at minus 3.2% on a base of 18.9%; LFL, which was same quarter last year; COFFY like-for-like sales grew at minus 2.6%. And last year, the same quarter was number was at 27.7%. Basically, high basis explain negative LFL.
For the 9-month period, DP Eurasia revenue reached INR 14.3 billion with an EBITDA margin of 23% and PAT margin of 7.2%. We have achieved a significant turnaround in Sri Lanka with record revenue of INR 213 million in Q3, up 65.4% year-on-year. The strong performance is entirely driven by same-store growth as we have strategically paused network expansion to focus on optimizing the existing stores. Key initiatives such as store relocation, exciting new product launches and the focus on local store marketing and campaigns have fueled this impressive growth. We also went on TV for the first time. In Bangladesh, the revenue was INR 173 million in Q3, up 38.6% year-on-year, scaling to a new record.
For the first 9 months, consolidated revenue came in at INR 60.4 billion, up 48% with an EBITDA of INR 11.8 billion, up 42% year-on-year translating to an EBITDA margin of 19.6%. In closing, we are delighted with our Q3 performance, which has helped us elevate the YTD trajectory of the business and remain focused on technology, delivery innovation in food and winning store-by-store, pizza by pizzas.
We believe single-minded focus on having technology and fast delivery capabilities are continuing -- are contributing to ahead of market performance. These are strategic modes for us. We will continue to invest ahead of the curve, and we see momentum build from Q2 to Q3 and Q4 as new acquired consumers begin to compound and come back to buy more and frequency has also improved.
With that, I request the moderator to commence the Q&A session.
[Operator Instructions] The first question is from Tejash Shah from Avendus Spark.
Congrats on a good set of numbers. Sameer, the first question is delivery is gaining traction and then doing phenomenally well. But despite multiple interventions that you would have done in the last quarters, last few quarters on dine-in, that isn't responding as expected. So any insights on that, any challenges or competitive landscape, which is different from delivery here?
Yes. I think the -- Tejash, firstly, I don't think it is -- I will not say it is not responding. It is actually responding. Our in-store lunch average weekly orders are highest in the last 2.5 years. So as you would recall, we have launched a INR 99, 4 course meal available only inside the stores during lunch hours. And there are many stores that I get customers line up to get it and after 3 p.m., there is a little bit of a pushback from customers why it is not available post 3 p.m. So dine-in -- if you look at our on-premise sales, there are 2 components: customers who come in to eat, get their pizza, sit down and then leave and there are customers who come in and do a takeaway.
The takeaway channel or the customer coming in for takeaways, that helps actually moved to completely delivery, understandably source and delivery is free, as the basis gets corrected, we are very confident delivery will also -- the dine-in will also improve. In fact, our -- the store experience, the new store that has come in with higher quality of materials, focus on store experience, greetings, all that is paying off. We see it in our numbers. I think it's a matter of quarter or 2, you'll also start seeing it.
Very clear. And second and last, the LFL and margin relation here, so if LFL recovery, just wanted to understand is there a technical angle also here from here on as most of our split stores, which were not part of LFL Club for last 2, 3 years must be returning and those are usually good locations, which got split so -- and hence, we are seeing a very sharp recovery in LFL, but commence to that margin expansion is not happening because of -- or there are any other reasons because we expected with this LFL much higher margins in this quarter?
Yes, I'm not saying that -- see the overall demand scenario is muted, right? Starting with that, we have taken 4 conscious calls to expand ahead of the market to do -- to get market share and acquire new customers. Now these 4 interventions are following. Firstly, I give more food through cheese, cheese burst and volcano pizza to customers. So therefore, we are engaging on with Gen Zs, and we are acquiring new customers.
Second intervention was to increase our marketing investments and fixed advertising above the line investments. Third is the -- we don't want to lose share on aggregator platforms. And therefore, we are matching the competitive discounts that is happening on that platform. And fourth is free delivery, right? And partly, we've recovered through packaging charges and internal tightening.
So all these 4 are very conscious choices, right? And it is investment for growth and investment for new customers that we are acquiring. At any time, I think we are very easy to kind of dial a bit down and let that flow. But I want to assure you, Domino's P&L is actually getting the leverage, maybe slightly lower than what we would like, but these are all investments for growth, and you will see compounding happening and just flowing to the bottom line. We are very clear about how and when this flows to bottom line.
Yes. And if I may squeeze in 1 last. Popeye 4 store addition in a festive quarter looks underwhelming. So any plan of scaling up there?
Yes. So I think we've drawn up a list of top 100 locations and it is a matter of finding those locations. So let me assure you the average daily sales for Popeyes is improving. Margins are improving CapEx is actually materially low from where we started. I think it's just -- we don't want to -- but look, getting the location is a one-way door, right?
If you get a wrong location, then you have to like live with it for a long time. And therefore, we are very -- we can open 100 stores as long as we get those 100 locations. And some of the locations like that we opened like Pacific Tagore Garden, right? In Delhi. Right these are testimony of that outstanding locations, and these stores are exceeding our expectations.
Next question is from Jignanshu Gor from Bernstein.
Congratulations on a strong quarter. I think I had 1 question on the gross margin. So what has contributed to that? And do you expect improvements in gross margin as we go forward, either in the form of price increases or in terms of premiumization of installed customers. So how would you think about that?
Yes. I think internally, we are targeting a 100 basis point improvement of gross margin, in the next 2 to 3 quarters, right? That's what we are planning to do. There are main initiatives on correction of wastages, on correction of other like packaging material, et cetera. So there are multiple initiatives on that one. We're also seeing where we can tighten the discounts, right? And so it definitely, it should improve, in my opinion. The reason is very simple on gross margin, actually. It is -- we didn't want to lose share, in fact we have gained share, as you can see from the numbers and it's a very conscious choice.
And then part of it is also delivery because there is a base you are probably comparing quarter-on-quarter. But there is -- this period generally has more discounting, right? Because everybody is on air, they're giving deals. So, just a part of it is festive period also, which should go away starting, obviously, January.
Okay. Fair. Okay. I think second question was in a way similar to the previous 1 on Popeyes, right, that we had a medium-term target for 250. So is it fair to say we are figuring out our product market fit there? Or do you think it's -- like what driver are you looking for to determine that this is now a growth story versus still trying to find where our positioning within the QSR space?
I think we -- to me, that there is definitely no challenge on customer value proposition, product market fit. I think there is a huge headroom driven by 1 large competitor in this space. So I think it is purely about execution. So India is a 70% chicken eating market. We started in South and therefore, that's the right place to start. That's where the densest of the market and highest ADS per store is there.
We are present in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Telangana, these are the right places to be in. If we come to NCR, we are looking to launch in Mumbai. So it is about finding the right location. We fixed a lot of unit economics in the last 3 or 4 months. We expanded the team. I have already put in a team that we're carrying it to some INR 2,000 crores.
So absolutely no bearishness on the outlook for Popeyes, we just have to find the right location that's all. And if you find 20 right locations, we'll build 20 stores. And we are in several such discussions with all the right properties that we own.
Okay. Fair. Are you looking at Popeyes also as a largely delivery-led model? Or do you think dine-in is where that will be focused on?
See the learning from rest of the world and Domino's is that on high street, when I -- even I look at some of the great competitive -- competitive brands, who are more dine-in focused, their dine-in or on-premise business is declining. And delivery tailwinds are universal and worldwide. So what we've done, we have refitted our store size to about 1,200 square feet on high street.
As you know, we have our own app, our own app salience is growing. And like Domino's, we deliver Popeyes. So we're building the -- so delivery will grow, right? That's a universal truth. So we have to be present in the right locations in malls, where there are footfalls and we have to be in the right locations with the right CapEx model. Delivery-led stores in high street. And both we know how to do it. And second 1 is a Domino's playbook, and we are seamlessly copying over there.
The next question is from Arnab Mitra from Goldman Sachs.
Congratulations on a great set of numbers. Now that you've seen good evidence of your strategy is working out in terms of consumer traction would it be reasonable to expect these levels of LFL to sustain going ahead? Or are there some base effects and other things, which we should be cognizant of in terms of how we expect this to move ahead?
And also a linked question to this is, as you rightly said, you've invested a lot to get this growth. Would you want to like dial back that investment a little bit focused on margins and therefore, that could be a reason why the LFL could be a time lower than what you've delivered this quarter going ahead?
I think all sets of great questions. The -- and that's a constant balancing act we have to do as operators of the business. And when we realize the like-for-like growth for the entire industry is spending. We had to look at for some helpful measures, and we went all gins blazing, right? And now we're seeing that growth, we are now balancing in terms of margins should also flow in. We should get the leverage and trust me, the teams are focused on it. In terms of momentum, right, we've put a lot of fuel into the engine. So it is growing. We do see growth momentum continue from Q2 to Q3 and Q4, right?
So from that perspective, I feel very good about the growth story. Margin story, we will correct. Like I said, I don't really worry on it. What will happen in Q1, Q2, Q3, right some could be a base effect, but I don't think because delivery growth year-on-year is not a base effect. This -- the way the -- some of the stores, even after splitting, we see they are coming back, getting into nearly 50-odd new cities in last 3 quarters is not a base effect. And in fact, I feel good about this. And we are -- and an absolute profit is increasing, right? So it is not that absolute profit is coming down. So our EBITDA -- stand-alone EBITDA grew by almost 11% despite investments in new brands.
So underlying business remains healthy. Margins we can always come in, but I don't want to take off the -- take the foot off the pedal on growth as the momentum picks up, I know this will flow through into the bottom line.
My second question was more of a bookkeeping question. So just we have seen a gap in the sequential trend in the pre-Ind-AS and the post-Ind-AS EBITDA margin. Could you just help me understand what has driven the trajectory change? And is it going to continue going ahead given how the accounting works? Or this should like start converging the territory, the direction should also start converging?
Suman here, let me take that question. No, so, it is actually a very bookkeeping accounting point of view, right? We do understand in pre-Ind-AS-116, the rental costs are above the line and rent costs are not increasing in line with the kind of growth we are seeing. So if you look at the difference is predominantly all coming from the leverage impact that we are not seeing in the post-Ind-AS numbers on account of rent leverage coming to in the P&L. It's 100% that itself, right?
So if you ask me my view if these growth continue, which is growth ahead of rental growth in the market, which at this point in time is lower than where our trajectory on growth is. These won't be -- we might see some of these headwinds going forward as well. Difficult to predict, of course, because it is an equation between 2 growth numbers. But this is normative headwind. And hence, as a business, we focus more on the operational EBITDA, which is the pre-Ind-AS number. So I think that's the right metric to chase.
The next question is from Percy Panthaki from IIFL Securities.
I just wanted to understand in the India business, what is the Y-o-Y decline in the average bill value and how much of this is due to the delivery charge waiver? And how much of it is due to down trading or any other impact?
Yes. So I think it is -- we don't disclose the average ticket size. It is fair to assume the entire decline is through delivery charges, partially offset by packaging charges. So the Domino's India revenue grew by 18% and the order grew by 34% that should give you some indication. It is largely delivery time, but it is also leading to 55% new customer growth. I think when you look at these 3 in tandem and this 1 customer acquired it is the 3x in a year.
So that compounding, we are seeing in our like numbers because this is the fourth quarter of predelivery. So the customers that we acquired in Q1 of this quarter. Now are we seeing that those coming 3 times in a year? The answer to that is yes. So therefore, I'm very confident about this investment and that to me will give us the real leverage.
Okay. So the year-over-year decline is only because of the delivery charge waiver. There is no down-trading. And there could be a third reason. There could be additional discounting in addition to delivery charges. So is that also 1 of the reasons because 19% versus 34%, that differential is quite huge.
Yes. So I think it is there, but not too much. So it is largely delivery lead and that is the only reason. We also had a -- so what is down trading, right? So typically, we used to define down trading. If a customer eating a medium pizza goes to a regular pizza and a regular pizza goes to a Pizza Mania, right? So that's how we define down trading. On the reverse, we've actually seen increased salience of core pizza ranges. Moving -- our customers are moving away from Pizza Mania, right? And free delivery allows them to order more and which we want customers to order more. If 1 pizza is over, they want to get another pizza, it breaks the shackle of ordering more. So I think it is largely an amount of your delivery.
Got it. And if I did sequentially, that is 2Q versus in 3Q. In 2Q itself this year, was the delivery charge completely waived off? Or it was only partial and only in 3Q, you have had the full impact of delivery charge waive off?
It was waived off during IPL last year, which was end of March 2024. So we are almost meeting the anniversary of it. So Q2 to Q3, the delivery charges have been the same.
Okay. So the sequential decline in gross margin of 100 basis points is mainly because of additional discounting and inflation and got nothing to do with any other factors?
That's correct. Basically that we invested in cheese, right. That's what we are saying like it because we gave more cheeese for the product. And right and that is the lever that we always have, right. So we can always reduce the discount on those products.
Understood. Secondly, I wanted to just touch up on international in the sense that, if I do a consol minus stand-alone net profit, it is about INR 9 crores for the quarter and about INR 29 crores, INR 30 crores for 9 months put together. So that's the INR 30 crore is about the net addition from the international business post the funding cost of the acquisition, et cetera, et cetera. So how do we look at this number going ahead into FY '26? Should we like grow it largely in line with the international top line? Or is it going to have some other drivers in addition to that?
There are no drivers. In fact, there is 9-month numbers will give you an indicator of how strong this business is. We don't see anything -- any surprises over there. In fact, teams are working in this environment to have a better operating cycle and release cash from the system. We have said that by second half of calendar year I believe they should also give some dividend to us. So I think there is absolutely nothing over there, but I'll let Suman give you more specifics.
So just on the international business. You're right, I think in quarter 3, we have seen a bit of an aberration there. Now I need to understand I think we do. Turkey goes through hyperinflation accounting, right? So there are a lot of inflation adjustment accounting increase, which happened. So quarter-on-quarter, we will see some variance. What -- and hence, Sameer alluded to the 9-month numbers, which is more representative on how the underlying performance of that business is.
So full year, like you asked, it will be more in line with the revenue growth, which will come through where you -- how you should estimate the profit growth to happen, margins, of course, there could be slight improvement or flattish numbers. We don't -- we are not estimating any declining margins coming through. But because of the nature of the business and the volatility in the accounting standard within Turkey, quarter-on-quarter we might see some aberration.
Even 9 months basis is about INR 30 crores ifference between stand-alone and consol net profit. So this is a tad lower than what we would have expected a year ago at the time of the acquisition, right?
No, it is not actually lower than what we had expected at the time of the acquisition. Still, if you look at Turkey from a PAT margin perspective, it is highly accretive to where India stand-alone margins are and that continues to be the case. Of course, you saw a bit of an aberration on Bangladesh business because of where the improvement has been seen in the overall profitability, which took a hit because of the disruption on the ground. But if I look at Sri Lanka, that has improved its margin status and even Turkey is holding on or just getting slightly better on a -- at a PAT level. So full year, we should not see any deviation on that. And as well, in fact, is doing better than we were expecting in terms of expectations.
The economy is strengthening, the business underlying metrics are improving, be it in terms of their inventory levels, which is ensuring that they don't have a higher cost coming out when the inflation accounting comes in next month in P&L, their interest costs are coming down. Their debt overall is reducing. So healthy shape of the business as the economy also recovers there. But yes, there will be variations quarter-on-quarter which we can explain to you offline on how it works. No real reason of concern.
Yes, in summary, the Turkey business case is ahead of plan, right? So I think the performance is ahead of the plan, what we had in this...
The next question is from Aditya Soman from CLSA.
So just 1 question from me. In your presentation in the sort of mature stores number, that's actually dropped for the last 2 quarters. So this is a function of just higher store splits?
I think you are -- at least when you look at the mature stores, it is, I don't know, which maybe you are referring to last , it is INR 85,959 in Q3, 2025. And last quarter was INR 79,467.
No, no, not the ADS, the number of mature stores. So the number of mature stores compared with what you reported in 2Q and then -- 2Q compared with what you reported in 1Q each quarter there's been a sequential declining in the number of mature stores.
Yes, It always happens. In quarter 1, we have the highest number of store count, it progressively comes down by quarter 4 in quarter 1, again of FY '26, you will see a higher store count.
So we just see that jump and that will lead to ADS coming down again or because last 2...
Small store numbers as we've reduced the number of stores split the impact of reduction in the restaurant base from 1,610 to 1,591 is not material. So we are not seeing -- we are not seeing ADS drop.
So there should be no change in that ADS number also, right, next year, when we see a bigger jump in the mature store that ADS should also continuing because largely they are not ADS though...
Yes. I think the ADS is rock solid. New stores are opening at a higher ADSs than ever before. So I'm not worried on that metric. It's more accounting, what you will included in a mature store or not and we'll probably next time onwards we will give you a better footnote on the quarter-on-quarter mature store ADS drop also. So that the calculation is very clear.
Next question is from Devanshu Bansal from Emkay Global.
Congrats on a very good [indiscernible]. Sir, your aggression in market share gain is obviously not a good news for smaller competition that sort of popped up over the last few years. I just want to check your view on continuation of this aggressive strategy of yours? And are we also sort of seeing initial signs of consolidation in the marketplace?
I would say like I'm -- what we control is our investments, our actions and every company wants to grow market share, right? So I think with that, I don't want to step away from driving growth because growth is the best help that you can give to the business and also in terms of margins and cash ultimately.
So in terms of competition, this is how -- see when I just to remove myself from my current position, the growth is definitely muted, right? For the industry and listed players and the large players, to me are actually doing better than some of unlisted and smaller, medium chains. There is a big question mark on dark stores. So I do expect with this kind of an environment, business moving largely towards delivery and competition of speed whatever 10-minute, 20-minute delivery increasing, some of these business models are under threat. But that might more take as somebody, who works in this industry. And that consolidation opportunity to me is sooner than later.
Sir, my second and last question, I sort of wanted to build on Percy's question. The difference between order growth and revenue growth in Domino's has increased over the last 3 quarters, right? So it was 7.5% in Q1, which increased to about 12% in Q2, and now it is 15% in Q3. So what is leading to a continued drop in realizations for us because delivery waiver impact was there in all the 3 quarters.
I think it is more delivery growing faster, right? That's the only thing which is happening over the channel mix is moving towards delivery. One thing that you must note when we did free delivery, we move to minimum order value of about INR 200 or INR 99. Earlier, there were higher delivery charges before INR 350. So we changed that purposefully. Therefore, you see the growth in new customers on account of that. That's the only thing.
Otherwise, there is no down trading happening. It's not that we are selling more Pizza Manias or we are selling 1 single item. The items per order is not really declining. It is largely the customers are -- have a lesser threshold in terms of ordering. So barrier has been broken and delivery is growing.
Just a follow-up here because the barrier or maybe the threshold is lower. So from a margin perspective, does that sort of hamper our model or we will still be able to sustain our margins because delivery cost for the order will remain same?
Yes. So I think -- this is how -- to me, I see this as an investment for growth. Right now, once you are investing for growth, the question to ask is, how will you recover? Now we recover on 2 fronts. One is when the compounding happens, SSG continues. And second is the further tightening of costs. So we -- like I said, we have a name program on improving margin by 100 basis points. We are looking at rentals very closely. We are looking at manpower and we are getting the leverage in manpower, where we are not getting the leverage and there is a higher-than-expected headwind, it is the delivery cost.
Because delivery at the channel is growing, which puts more pressure on riders and therefore, to keep the same service level of nearly 20 minutes, we are actually paying more to the riders during the festive season. So that is the only headwind, which is to say, which also will get corrected in my opinion as we find newer ways of working.
Just last one small question. So we have launched chicken products after sort of experimenting in the South. So I just wanted to check, if you could qualitatively share what was the kind of IDS pickup for these products that we sort of saw in the South region, which gave us sort of confidence to sort of launch it pan India.
Yes. I think we -- I'll tell you what was the thesis and give us like time until this quarter because we went on air only 10 days ago with the first time like Domino's coming out and ATL campaign focused on chicken fees. So the -- this is how we see our data. Among the world and also in India. North India has the highest weekly sales of stores. Yet our share in pizza category on aggregator is lower versus South, where the throughput per store is lower than the North, but the share is higher.
So that explains that the -- the customers are looking for other products along with pizzas or they are not eating pizza, as much as they probably eat in North. And that is the insight once we do. They are looking for more nonvegetarian options. They are looking for more bone-in chicken. Therefore, we launch wings, they are looking for rice along with chicken. Therefore, we launched [ chicken ] meals. They're looking for currency crunchy non-veg bites, therefore, we launched poppers and boneless wings. So I think we have -- we heard the consumer, we experimented actually south is after the launch has become the fastest growing or 1 of the faster-growing regions among the 7 regions that we have.
Next question is from Latika Chopra from JPMorgan.
My first question was your new customer growth is fairly strong...
Latika. I can't really hear you very clearly. If you are on a hands-free, requesting you to use the handset.
Is it better?
Slightly better, Latika, if you can speak louder and maybe little slowly we can catch you what you're saying.
Sure. My first question was around new city additions. You have added almost 60 cities over the last 4 quarters and you have added this year in 9 months almost 145 new Domino's stores. I'm just trying to understand how many more cities potential you see to expand into? And how does that feed into your store additional ambition in an annualized basis over the next 3, 4 years. Considering you're moving more towards refocused kind of unit?
Yes. I think firstly, we are seeing opportunity on both, right? And I quote this example a lot, when I've joined a couple of years ago, we had about 30-odd stores in Gurgaon we are now reaching nearly 50, and we believe we can add in the 20 more, right? So densification as cities expand, as new shopping areas, new congregation points like movie halls and other things come up. There is always more opportunity, including metro stations and highways, et cetera. So firstly, we are seeing tremendous opportunity in the city, where we are fully covering like, Gurgaon.
Secondly, there are cities like Ahmedabad where we don't cover the full city. There are not enough white spaces. And these are not only listed to Ahmedabad, it is in Lucknow and Kanpur. And then the third piece is new cities, which is whether it's Giridih or Sasaram or Badaun or Latur, right? So I think, definitely, we see more and more opportunity of those. We are present in nearly 500. We believe there are 500 other cities that we are -- we can get to.
And we are still present in the biggest like what the district center, right? And these are some of these districts are like more than 7, 8, 10 lakh population. We have not gone to the biggest taluka right, over there. So for context, KFC in China is present in 10,000 cities. Sorry, 1,000 cities, my bad 1,000 cities. So there is definitely room to get to more.
And Sameer, is it -- any sense, I don't know how you cut it, whether the salience of top 20 cities is in your revenue mix, how has that behaved over the last 5 years for you? Has that materially changed? If you can share some color on that? And also in terms of profitability metrics across cities, new cities are not margin dilutive for you?
They are accretive -- actually is slightly accretive in percentage terms lower in absolute profit because their costs are also lower. Dine-in takeaway is higher in these cities. Delivery salience is lower. So -- but throughput is lower. So we are -- I think we -- Latika the best question to ask is the payback period lower in these cities, right? So the answer is no. So we continue to maintain 2, 2.5 years of payback period. As long as that is coming, I think that's the other metric that we chase.
And salience of largest cities, anything that you have to share? How you track...
I think we're expanding again, like how we run our new, like I said, for Popeyes. Same thing the team from Domino's have done, they have a list of 1,000 stores that they want to open whatever, in the next 3, 4, 5 year time frame. So they are -- so as long as they get those locations, they will continue to open. So these 1,000 locations are -- some of them are in places like densed like Gurgaon, Goregaon and some of these, these are in Badun and Latur and rest of the world. So we are -- so whenever we find the right location, we'll open the store.
Sure. And the second thing that I wanted to check for the aggregator salience in delivery mix now because you talked about more promotions on this channel on the platforms that we wanted to grab more share, but at the same time, your own app metrics are also fairly healthy. So could you give us some color on how this mix is trending? And what kind of differentiation is there in terms of profit metric between own versus aggregator platform?
Yes. Nothing, I will not answer that question because I'm here to serve customers -- Latika, can you hear us?
Yes, I can hear you.
Sorry. So no, the -- we refrain from giving mixes. Having said that, our apps are growing very healthy. In fact, when I came in, I had put the entire engineering team just to focus on Domino's app. And as a result, we have the most immersive experience for pizza customers, who are looking for pizza.
So you will see videos of pizzas, you'll easy user experience or user experience to upgrade, to add more products, add side items. It is built for pizza. And over the years, we've made it very topical. We celebrate from Valentine's day to landing of Chandrayaan on Moon, right. So we have become very topical in delivering to customers. And the built-in CRM helps customer come back. So that piece is working out better than our expectations.
And like I said, aggregators, we want to see them as ecosystem partners, we see them great statics channel partners. And it's a very competitive landscape over there and we work hard to maintain our share or improve our shares on aggregators. So it doesn't matter as long as we are getting customers, right? That's how I see -- and delivery is a worldwide tailwind and with our own rider fleet of 46,000 riders, a network that is ever expanding ability to give hot pizza in 20 minutes, actually, that's not the most important thing that I worry about.
Next question is from Jay Doshi from Kotak.
Congratulations on great acceleration growth. I've got 2 questions. The first 1 is, in this quarter, we saw about 18% top-line growth and 14% pre-Ind-AS EBITDA. Now how should we think about the gap between revenue growth and EBITDA growth on a pre-Ind-AS basis going forward over the next 2, 3 quarters, if you continue to stay at a similar 15% plus system sales growth levels?
Yes, that is -- internally, we look at like this in the following manner. We tease out the Domino's portfolio and see is that growing and like we mentioned in our comments, is it in mid-teens and improving. So that's how we see that particular business. On the other business, we see the overall drag to the P&L and the unit economics improving.
So these are the trade-off factors, allow us maybe 1 more quarter because let this stabilize because we launched free deliveries in March. Maybe by next quarter, we'll have a much more scientific answer on that there to be. Otherwise, I'll be more hazarding I guess at the base. And we also do a better calculation to answer your question.
Sure. Second question is, if I do some back of the envelope calculations, your dine-in order growth is about 30%, but dine-in revenues have declined by about 2% which means that there is 25% decline in average order value for dine-in, but there is no delivery fee waiver impact or anything of that sort. And if I actually were to look at absolute number, it means your dining average order value may have dropped by INR 125 or somewhere in 100, 125. So this incremental dine-in order that you are sort of getting, is it -- even if I assume all of that is Thali or INR 49?
No, no. It's not like that. No, it's not like that. Thali is only like only 11 to 3 p.m., and it's a part that was a business with a very low base. So that number, while it is growing healthy. I think we see on the -- inside the store, you have to look at dine-in and takeaway. Customers who come in, take the pizza eat there and leave and customers, who just come in to take the pizza to their home.
So that is a takeaway business. So dine-in business is growing very healthy, and you will see improvements coming in, in the coming quarters on both dine-in plus takeaway as a business. And this is only the takeaway business that is kind of declining. So there is a sub channel mix that is there between what we call as a dine-in, takeaway business. So there is no massive -- in fact, the decline in, like you were saying, the decline in average ticket size, inside the store is very marginal.
We'll take that as the last question. On behalf of Jubilant FoodWorks Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.
