Shadley Nash
The greasy details of rivalry between two take-away pizza traders emerged unwittingly in an unlikely place this week — the rape trial of a self-confessed
The Port Elizabeth Supreme Court — sitting for the rape trial against satanist Frans du Toit who, in a third rape confession, admitted to raping a 20-year-old woman last year — heard brief details of spying between rival pizzerias offering delivery services in the city.
Du Toit’s victim told the court she was in her mother’s car compiling a “survey” for her boss at a pizzeria where she held a part-time job when Du Toit abducted her at gunpoint.
She said her assignment was to monitor how many people entered the rival pizzeria and how much “people bought” from Pizza Mania for her employers at Pizza 2 Go.
“I started the survey at 6pm and would have completed it two hours later,” she told the court.
A representative of Pizza 2 Go declined to comment, saying “print what you like, I have a business to run”.
Pizza Mania franchiser Paul Pettitt said his business was “amused” that his firm had been spied upon and “flattered” at its rival’s interest.
Pettitt said: “Pizza Mania is successful enough to afford to employ professional market researchers whenever the need arises to confirm our popularity and does not jeopardise the safety of our staff by instructing them to loiter late at night in front of other pizza retailers.” — Ecna