For the longest time, Pizza Hut was the No. 1 pizza chain worldwide, but Domino’s has overtaken that top spot a few years ago. In fact, Domino’s has been growing non-stop since 2010 at a whopping 2,780%. As a comparison, the S&P 500 grew by 181% in the same period. So how did they do it?

Delivery Mode:

• Domino’s has always been a delivery focussed pizza chain, with the famous ‘30 minute delivery or else free pizza’ sales pitch.

• Essentially, they were cloud kitchens before mainstream food delivery was a thing.

• Hence, they have their own delivery fleet, saving costs on engaging 3rd party delivery services

• Plus, Domino’s has always embraced tech, being one of the pioneers to enable online ordering.

• With their killer app now, they have 85 million users in their database.

• You could say it’s a tech company that sells pizza. 😏

• But they were always seen as cheap, with a brand image that was for broke college kids, whereas Pizza Hut was more family-friendly with nicer dine-in environments and bougie stuffed crusts.

• Domino’s had to change their brand perception.

What’s in the Box?

• Back then, the most common complaint about Domino’s pizza was that the crust tasted like cardboard, that’s how cheap their image was.

• But Domino’s didn’t do what most brands would do ie. repackage their products or introduce new promo items.

• Instead, Dominos owned up to their flaws, they went back to the test kitchen and used better ingredients, creating more consistent and higher quality pizzas than before.

• This was part of an Ad campaign launched in 2009 where they pretty much went “yeah, our pizzas sucked, but not anymore”.

• By admitting their faults, Domino’s showed sincerity and the public could taste the genuine change.

The combination of improving the product and relationship with the customer, paired with the delivery business modal that aged incredibly well in the post-Covid world, that’s how Domino’s dominated.

Before you go...

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This series is brought to you by Lee Way (@leewaylau). He will be writing about political & societal issues, history, movies and music on What's Up Wednesday.