In a special series, The Advertiser is taking a look back at some of the state’s most iconic fast food outlets and Pizza Haven has featured.
Pizza Haven was established in 1984, when the sons of Cypriot migrants, Evan, Louis, Bill and Gabriel Christou, found an empty shop in the South Australian suburb of Glenelg and took out a $24,000 mortgage on their parents’ house.
Less than a year later, they had gained popularity and introduced home delivery, something that was still a novelty at the time.
“From the very outset, we opened the restaurant with a view to expanding. It was never our intention to open just one restaurant,” Evan Christou said in a book.
By 1985, the second restaurant opened in Christie Downs and by 1986 they’d opened their seventh restaurant at Enfield. In the following years, the restaurant would expand to Sydney and Melbourne and New Zealand.
Eventually the pizza chain was taken over by Dominos in 2005 and more recently Pizza Hut in 2016.
Pizza Haven had a turnover of $25 million and was the only wholly-Australian owned company in the top 10 list of fast food operators.
Source: The Advertiser
