PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Restau­rants un­der the Glob­al Brands um­brel­la have not­ed a marked in­crease in the sales of cold drinks at their es­tab­lish­ments.

Glob­al Brands di­rec­tor William Sab­ga- Aboud con­firmed that in re­sponse to the high tem­per­a­tures seen for the past two months, cus­tomers have been buy­ing more cold drinks at Rit­u­als, Piz­za Boys and Church’s Chick­en out­lets around the coun­try.

“So with the hot weath­er re­cent­ly, we’ve ac­tu­al­ly seen an in­flux in the num­ber of cold drinks sold at all three of our brands, Church’s, Piz­za Boys and Rit­u­als. And in­no­va­tion has al­lowed us to ac­tu­al­ly in­crease our sales vol­umes in those key item cat­e­gories,” said Sab­ga Aboud, who ex­plained that the re­cent­ly launched Rit Fresh­ers line ben­e­fit­ted from this in­creased de­mand for cold drinks.

“With Rit­u­als. We had the Rit Fresh­er launch, and of course our num­ber one sell­er the chillers with Piz­za Boys. We launched our pina co­la­da drinks over the sum­mer as well and that has al­lowed a great in­flux for that brand. And then at Church’s Chick­en, of course every­body loves the fruity fizz. We’ve seen a lot of great feed­back on that as well,” said Sab­ga Aboud.

De­spite the re­turn of rain in past few weeks, the brands ex­pects these drinks to con­tin­ue to be among their top sell­ers.

“We do see some sus­tain­abil­i­ty and we’ve seen pe­ri­ods of wet weath­er or rain and we’ve still seen a steady rise in our sales or those vol­umes have stayed steady. So we do ex­pect some sus­tain­abil­i­ty there,” said Sab­ga-Aboud.

He was speak­ing at the re-open­ing of Rit­u­als/Piz­za Boys/Church’s Food Mall on the Ch­agua­nas Main Road on Thurs­day.

The branch was closed for two weeks for ren­o­va­tions.

Mar­ket­ing man­ag­er for Rit­u­als Cof­fee House, Meli­na Sooree, con­firmed that the branch’s re­open­ing was high­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed as it was one of the top ten lo­ca­tions for the chain.

Sab­ga-Aboud al­so con­firmed that fol­low­ing a meet­ing with Min­istry of Health of­fi­cials ear­li­er this week, Glob­al Brands is ex­pect­ed to ad­just its menu to in­clude more health-friend­ly op­tions.