Domino's

• 1. Introduction

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  In 1960, brothers Tom and Jim Monaghan took over a small pizza shop at 507 Cross Street in Ypsilanti, Michigan. It stood near Eastern Michigan University, and it was called DomiNick's. A $500 down payment sealed the deal, and the brothers then borrowed $900 to pay for the store.

  The plan was to split the work hours evenly. Jim, however, was a full-time postman, and he did not want to quit his job for a business that demanded so much. Within eight months, he handed his half to Tom in exchange for the Volkswagen Beetle the brothers used for pizza deliveries.

  That car swap was the start of Domino's. By 2018, the company ran roughly 15,000 stores and had a presence in more than 83 countries and 5,701 cities.

  How does a shop bought with borrowed money become a worldwide chain? Why did a company built on speed give up its most famous promise? And what happens when an American delivery brand carries its product to pizza's birthplace?

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• 2. Name and Ownership

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  By 1965, Tom Monaghan had bought two more pizzerias and now ran three stores in the same county. He wanted all three to share one name, but the original owner forbade him from using DomiNick's. The solution came from Jim Kennedy, an employee who returned from a delivery run and suggested "Domino's". Monaghan loved the idea at once and renamed the business Domino's Pizza, Inc. that same year.

  The first logo carried three dots, one for each store. Monaghan meant to add a dot for every new location, but growth was so quick that the idea faded. The first franchise opened in 1967, and by 1978 the company had 200 stores.

  A buyer today pays a $10,000 initial franchise fee, then 5.5% of weekly sales as royalty and 4% of weekly sales for advertising. In 2018, franchised stores averaged $22,045 in weekly sales, a figure that had risen steadily for five years. That works out to more than a million dollars a year per store.

  The name soon drew a legal challenge. In 1975, Amstar Corporation, the maker of Domino Sugar, sued for trademark infringement and unfair competition. While the case dragged on, Domino's opened fifteen new stores under the name Pizza Dispatch and converted other stores to it. On the 2nd of May 1980, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ruled in favor of Domino's Pizza.

  In 1998, after 38 years in charge, Monaghan announced his retirement. He sold 93 percent of the company to Bain Capital for about $1 billion and stepped away from daily operations. A year later, the company named Dave Brandon as its chief executive.

  In 2004, after 44 years as a private company, Domino's began trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol DPZ. On the 12th of December 2024, it announced a move to the Nasdaq Global Select Market. The switch took effect at the market open on the 2nd of January 2025, and the ticker symbol stayed DPZ.

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• 3. The Leaning Tower of Pizza

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  In the mid-1980s, Tom Monaghan decided he wanted a skyscraper. He asked Taliesin Associated Architects, the inheritors of Frank Lloyd Wright's practice, to build a version of the Golden Beacon, a tower Wright designed for Chicago in 1956. Wright's tower was never built. At some point during the planning, Monaghan and the Taliesin architects parted ways, allegedly because both sides feared the project would not honor the spirit of Wright's architecture.

  Monaghan then went to Gunnar Birkerts, the architect of the company's unusual headquarters office building. That building runs half a mile (800 m) in length and sits at Domino's Farms, an office park in Ann Arbor Township, Michigan.

  Birkerts proposed a 30-story tower that would rise at a 15-degree angle. Its swooping top recalled the forms of Wright's late work, and it was meant to house the company's operations at the campus.

  The design had serious intent, but it was nicknamed the "Leaning Tower of Pizza" almost immediately, after the Leaning Tower of Pisa in Italy. The tower was never built. A scale model, 50 ft tall, still stands at the proposed site near Ann Arbor.

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• 4. Planting Flags

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  On the 12th of May 1983, Domino's opened its first international store in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. That same year, its 1,000th store opened at 8086 E. Mill Plain Blvd. in Vancouver, Washington. In 1985, the chain reached Luton in the United Kingdom and also opened a store in Tokyo, Japan.

  Colombia received the first Latin American franchise in 1988. Mexico and Guatemala followed in 1989, Chile in 1991, Venezuela in 1992, the Dominican Republic in 1993, and Ecuador and Peru in 1995. In 1993, Domino's became the second American franchise in the Dominican Republic and the first in Haiti, under the direction of entrepreneur Luis de Jesús Rodríguez. Peru ran into trouble in 2015. The franchise closed after administration problems and several cases of unhealthiness, then reopened a year later under new owners.

  Also in 1993, two companies bought rights that still shape the map. Australian Domino's Pizza Enterprises took the Australian and New Zealand franchises, and the British publicly listed Domino's Pizza Group bought the master franchise for the United Kingdom and Ireland. The Australian company later added several European and Asian franchises between 2013 and 2022. In August 2012, the British group bought the Swiss master franchise holder, which also covered Liechtenstein and Luxembourg.

  Domino's Pizza Israel was founded in 1990 and opened its first branch in 1993, operated by Elgad Pizza. By August 2014, it had 33 branches, four of them kosher.

  By 1995, the chain had 1,000 international locations. In 1997, it marked its 1,500th by opening seven stores in a single day across five continents. In January 2006, it staged a double celebration. The 5,000th American store opened in Huntley, Illinois, and the 3,000th international store opened in Panama City, Panama, bringing the system to 8,000 stores. That August, the Tallaght location in Dublin, Ireland, became the first in company history to reach $3 million (€2.35 million) in yearly turnover.

  Not every border held. In December 2016, the British group opened its first Swedish store near the Mobilia shopping mall in Malmö. Three years later, it announced it would sell all of its Swedish businesses. The Australian company acquired the Danish operations in 2019 and liquidated them in 2023.

  Italy was the great ambition. By 2014, the company had 6,000 international locations, and in May of that year CEO Patrick Doyle said Domino's would concentrate on delivery in Italy. The first Italian store opened in Milan on the 5th of October 2015. It faced tough local competition and fell behind on its debt obligations.

  In April 2022, the Italian franchise operator EPizza SpA filed for bankruptcy at a Milan court. Two years of falling sales during the COVID-19 lockdowns had taken their toll. Local restaurants had also begun using delivery apps such as Glovo, Just Eat and Deliveroo. Customer ratings for Domino's outlets were very low, which made it hard to compete with the quality of Italian pizza. After a 90-day grace period ended in July 2022, every Italian store closed on the 20th of July.

  Russia followed in 2023. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Domino's Russian operations filed for bankruptcy, and the company announced its withdrawal and closed all of its restaurants shortly afterward. In August 2023, the rapper Timati bought the Russian network and renamed it Domиno Pizza.

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• 5. Asia's Appetite

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  In 1995, Domino's entered China through the Pizza Vest Fast Food Group, which also held the rights to operate the brand in eleven Southeast Asian countries. The first mainland store opened in the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone, and the first Beijing store opened in the Haidian District in May 1997. In December 2006, Taiwan's Jinghua Hotel Group invested NT$500 million to acquire the rights for Taiwan and Beijing. In 2017, Dash Brands Ltd., an investment company specializing in restaurant chains, obtained the exclusive rights for Hong Kong and Macau.

  As of October 2019, Domino's Pizza China had about 250 stores in nine cities. Shanghai held about 100 of them and Beijing about 75. The menu there includes potato bacon pizza, crayfish crispy-and-tender chicken pizza, durian pulp pizza and salted egg-yolk pizza. Sichuan pepper-flavor chicken drumsticks round out the list.

  In China, more than 90% of orders are placed online, through the website, an app, the messaging app WeChat, or in stores. The company insists its own distribution system better protects service quality and data. Even so, it has opened a cooperation model with third-party take-out platforms such as Taobao Shangou and Meituan.

  India's first Domino's opened in Delhi in 1996. The company Jubilant FoodWorks holds the master franchises for India, Nepal and Sri Lanka. In February 2016, the 1,000th Indian store opened. By 2018, Domino's operated 1,362 stores across 264 Indian cities, and India remains the only country outside the United States with more than 1,000 outlets.

  In Bangladesh, Jubilant FoodWorks owns 51% of Domino's Pizza Bangladesh Limited, and Golden Harvest Limited owns the rest. The first Bangladeshi store opened in February 2019. In May 2024, the chain opened its first Central Asian franchise in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.

  Growth in Asia has not been a one-way road. On the 7th of February 2025, Domino's announced plans to close more than 200 stores worldwide, 172 of them in Japan, where Domino's Pizza Japan operates 1,000 stores. The announcement came after Mark van Dyck took over as CEO and managing director. The stated reason was low sales in the selected stores. Australia and New Zealand was the only market to report positive growth, and the company expected the closures to cut costs by about $9.8 million.

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• 6. Menu and Reinvention

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  For its first three decades, the Domino's menu was deliberately plain. It offered one style of crust in two sizes, 12-inch and 16-inch, along with eleven toppings and Coca-Cola as the only soft drink. The simplicity kept deliveries efficient, and it lasted until the early 1990s.

  The first expansion came in 1989 with deep dish. Market research had shown that 40% of pizza customers preferred thick crusts. The launch cost about $25 million, of which $15 million went to new sheet metal pans with perforated bottoms. In early 1993, the company began testing extra-large pizzas, starting with "The Dominator", a yard-long pizza cut into 30 slices.

  In August 2002, Domino's followed a trend toward bite-size food with "Buffalo Chicken Kickers", an alternative to Buffalo wings. The breaded, baked white-meat fillets came in a custom box with two sauces, one to heat the chicken up and one to cool it down. In August 2003, the "Philly Cheese Steak Pizza" became its first new pizza since January 2000, launched in partnership with the National Cattlemen's Beef Association. The "Brooklyn Style Pizza" followed in 2006, with a thinner crust, cornmeal baked in for crispness, and large slices that could be folded like a New York slice.

  In 2008, Domino's launched oven-baked sandwiches in four styles to compete with Subway's toasted subs. Early marketing offered free sandwiches to customers named "Jared", a nod to Subway's spokesman. The next year brought the "American Legends" pizzas with 40% more cheese than regular pies, the "BreadBowl Pasta" and the "Lava Crunch Cake", a crunchy chocolate shell filled with warm fudge. To promote the dessert, the company flew in 1,000 cakes to deliver at the Hoffstadt Bluffs Visitor Center near Mount St. Helens in Washington state.

  Behind the launches sat an uncomfortable verdict. A 2009 survey of national chains by Brand Keys ranked Domino's last, tied with Chuck E. Cheese. That December, the company announced it would reinvent its pizza entirely. A self-critical ad campaign filmed consumers criticizing the old pizza and showed chefs developing a new one, which was unveiled the same month.

  In 2010, the company's 50th anniversary year, Domino's changed its recipe "from the crust up", altering the dough, sauce and cheese. It also hired J. Patrick Doyle as CEO and saw a 14.3% quarterly gain. Pizza Today magazine named Domino's its "Chain of the Year" in 2003-2010 and 2011.

  Other changes followed. In 2011, Domino's launched artisan-style pizzas. In August 2012, it shortened its name from Domino's Pizza to simply Domino's and unveiled a new logo. The blue rectangle and text under the domino disappeared, and the domino turned blue on the two-dot side and red on the one-dot side. The company said it wanted to expand its menu choices beyond traditional pizza.

  On the 24th of September 2012, pan pizza arrived and replaced the original Deep Dish, which had been on the menu for 23 years. In December 2013, Domino's Pizza Israel unveiled its first vegan pizza, made with a soy-based cheese substitute supplied by the UK company VBites.

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• 7. Ads and Promises

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  In late 1986, Domino's became known for slapstick commercials starring the Noid. Group 243 Inc. created the character, and Will Vinton Studios produced the spots. The Noid personified every bad experience a person could have with pizza delivery, and the catchphrase was "Avoid the Noid".

  The campaign gained a darker kind of notoriety in 1989. A man named Kenneth Lamar Noid, believing the mascot was an imitation of him, held two Domino's employees hostage in Chamblee, Georgia. The employees escaped while he ate a pizza he had ordered. He was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and acquitted by reason of insanity, and he died in 1995. Domino's has stated that the hostage situation did not cause the campaign's retirement. The Noid returned for a week in 2011 in an arcade-style game on the company's Facebook page, where the top scorer won a coupon for a free pizza.

  A website glitch caused a different kind of publicity in March 2009. The company had planned a giveaway for December 2008 but scrapped it without promoting it. The redemption code was never deactivated, and someone found it by typing the word "bailout" into the site. The discovery spread online, and nearly 11,000 free medium pizzas were handed out across the United States. Domino's switched the code off on the morning of the 31st of March 2009 and promised to reimburse store owners.

  Domino's also took to the track. It sponsored CART's Doug Shierson Racing, whose driver Arie Luyendyk won the 1990 Indianapolis 500. In 2003, it became the "Official Pizza of NASCAR" in a multi-year partnership. During the 2007 season, it sponsored Michael Waltrip Racing and driver David Reutimann.

  Speed was the oldest promise of all. Beginning in 1973, Domino's guaranteed delivery within 30 minutes or the pizza was free. In 1987, the penalty changed to $3 off. In 1992, the company settled a lawsuit brought by the family of an Indiana woman killed by a speeding Domino's driver, paying $2.8 million.

  In 1993, a jury awarded nearly $80 million to a woman injured when a Domino's driver ran a red light and hit her car. She accepted a payout of $15 million. The guarantee was dropped that year. Then-CEO Tom Monaghan cited the "public perception of reckless driving and irresponsibility".

  In December 2007, Domino's introduced the slogan "You Got 30 Minutes", which alluded to the old pledge without promising half-hour delivery. The company still honors the 30-minute guarantee in Colombia, Vietnam, Mexico, China and India, subject to local terms and conditions.

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• 8. Gadgets and Goodwill

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  In 2007, Domino's rolled out online and mobile ordering sites, and in 2008 it introduced the Pizza Tracker. The tool lets customers watch the status of an order on a real-time progress bar. Since 2005, the voice of the company's US phone ordering service has been Kevin Railsback. In 2011, a Times Square billboard in New York displayed real-time comments from customers, whether good, neutral or bad.

  In 2015, the company unveiled the Domino's DXP, a Chevrolet Spark customized by Roush Performance. It carries 80 pizzas, sides, two-liter bottles of soda and dipping sauces, and it has an on-board oven kept at 140 °F. Once a car reaches 100,000 miles, it is retired and returned to Roush, where it is restored to stock form.

  In 2016, Domino's worked with Starship Technologies to deliver pizzas by self-driving robots in specific German and Dutch cities. That same year, Domino's in New Zealand made the world's first pizza delivery by unmanned aerial vehicle, using the DRU Drone by Flirety. In June 2019, the company announced a partnership with the robotics company Nuro, with a launch planned in Houston, Texas, using Nuro's custom self-driving vehicle, the R2.

  In June 2018, a project called "Paving for Pizza" began, offering grants to fix cracks and potholes so pizzas would not be ruined on the road. The company reached agreements with four places: Burbank, California; Bartonville, Texas; Athens, Georgia; and Milford, Delaware. The paved sections carry the Domino's logo and the slogan "OH YES, WE DID".

  Domino's has long paired promotion with giving. In 2001, it launched a two-year national partnership with the Make-A-Wish Foundation of America. That year, its stores in New York City and Washington, D.C., provided more than 12,000 pizzas to relief workers after the September 11 attacks. A matching funds program added $350,000 for the American Red Cross. In 2004, Domino's joined the "Thanks and Giving" campaign of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, raising $5.2 million in 2014. It also introduced its Veterans Delivering the Dream franchising program in 2007.

  In February 2017, Domino's launched a wedding registry with gifts delivered as Domino's cards. It also worked with Gugu Guru on a pizza-themed baby registry.

  Inflation reshaped the offers that followed. In December 2021, the company began adding "surprise frees", complimentary items worth up to $50 million, to set itself apart from delivery apps that charged fees. In January 2022, it cut back on promotions and adjusted some menu items in response to inflationary pressures. September brought an "Inflation Relief Deal" with a 20% discount on online ordering for a limited time, and in November Domino's added 800 Chevrolet Bolt cars to its US fleet.

  In 2020, Domino's committed to sourcing 100% cage-free eggs by 2025.

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