Domino’s pizza company review

Domino’s Pizza is a pizza restaurant chain founded in 1960 where it is headquartered at Ann Arbor, Michigan. In February 2018, it became the largest pizza seller worldwide in terms of sales. What started off as a pizza chain, in the last ten years, they have launched sandwiches, lava cakes, wings, boneless chicken, and even salads for the more health savvy customers. Obviously if they are at the top, they know how to make money, but are they being socially responsible?

I would say they are. It’s just in a few cities, but Domino’s has stepped up to cover up potholes. They have promoted it as, “ We don’t want to lose a great tasting pizza to a pothole.” Apart from this, they acknowledge that a lot of cities especially in the USA’s infrastructure is not the greatest. So here they took the initiative and started covering up potholes and marking the Dominos logo onto it. Dominos as a pizza chain has a few stakeholders: their customers, competitors, their employees, managers, executive team, owners of franchises, suppliers, the community, and society as a whole. While some of these may be obvious as to why they are a stakeholder, others could be overseen, such as society as a whole. If we think about it, how does our pizza get delivered to us? It’s in a cardboard box, which is naturally biodegradable. It does less harm to the earth wherever it may end up, once it’s disposed of, once it’s main purpose is used up.

Like a lot of businesses though, they have gone through scandals. Two former employees in North Carolina made a video and posted it on YouTube where it is seen that they are messing with the sandwich, by putting cheese up their nose, putting mucous onto the sandwich and placing a company used sponge between his butt. Once the video went viral, the two employees were arrested because in North Carolina it is considered a felony if caught food tampering. That store was later closed for disinfecting and restaffing. The franchisee had brought in the local health department to see what they could do, which then were advised to throw out anything that way already opened, which costed hundreds of dollars. Once the video went viral, executives tried to not address the problem, hoping it would go away quickly and quietly. This isn’t to say that they weren’t taking action, they just weren’t out there announcing it to the world.

Once this seemed not to work out, they made a twitter account to interact with customers who had questions or concerns about the video. Once they explained everything, the CEO actually thanked the people that made the video go viral so they can address a problem that was going on internally. This was definitely a learning experience, that I think a lot of companies could have learned from. Social Media was becoming a bigger presence in society and to believe it would go away without address it was naïve for them to think but at the time nothing like this had happened. So they just took it as a learning experience. While dealing with this, there had also been sayings that their crust tasted like cardboard, and their sauce like ketchup. This had caused stocks to fall below $4 a share. This is then when they changed their recipe and closed down low performing franchisees. Plus, adding to themselves, they had remodeled stores to attract new customers.

If you walk into any local Dominos today, you will more than likely see exactly how a pizza is made: from putting cornmeal on to the gooey dough, all the way to putting on the toppings and waiting exactly 7 ½ minute from the point of putting it into the oven to taking it out, then adding the garlic onto the crust, making for a mouth watering pizza. 10 years later from the stock prices being below $4, they are well above $200 today. This is due to the executives at the top listening to what customers want, and doing what needs to be done to ensure that customers keep coming back. On top of that, they stay up to date with technology. They know that some people don’t like to be interactive or are really busy, so Domino’s set it up to where customers can order whatever they like online. Whether that be ordering to pick up 20 large Pepperoni Pizzas, or having 3 2-liters delivered to you on a Southern California summer’s day, you can get anything they carry right at your fingertips. Even better, in 2008, they introduced their pizza tracker. If customers don’t want to go to the store too early and wait with the 15 other people in a small lobby before their order is done, they can just track where their order is; whether that be in the oven, on the make-line, or ready for pick up. You can now go straight in and know that your well prepared order will be greasy and ready for pick up.

Dominos also has started up a program, where once you place an order online, once you checkout you can round up to the nearest dollar and they give it to charity. While your order may be $12. 97 and you donate the change, while it may not seem like much, if everyone donates 3 cents, that’s starts to build up quickly. The other aspect to this is the partnership between Domino’s and St. Jude’s Children Research Hospital. This has been going on for the past few years during the holiday season where customers are encouraged to donate $1,$2,$5, or $10. There’s also the St. Jude meal deal which includes two medium one topping Hand Tossed pizzas, a 16-piece order of Parmesan Bread Bites, an eight-piece order of Cinnamon Bread Twists, a two liter of Coke and a $1 donation to St. Jude for $19. 99. Since partnering up in 2004, they have raised over $47, 000, 000.

I know in my time being at Dominos, there was plenty of diversity. There were 18 year olds all the way up to 55 year olds. There were just as many men as there were women. At my certain location there was a bit of everything in the ethnic bowl. There were Mexicans, Cubans, Irish, African, and Armenian workers. There were no race wars, we were all there to make the company run as smoothly as possible. Lucky for us, unlike Chiquita Banana, we weren’t paying a militia to stay alive. While we weren’t in the safest area in town, once it got late, we would lock the doors and just use the carry out window instead to ensure our safety.

In 2012, Dominos joined joined the SmartWay Transport Partnership, an innovative collaboration between The EPA and itself that provides a framework to assess the environmental and energy efficiency of goods movement supply chains. Domino’s Pizza will contribute to the Partnership’s savings of 1. 5 billion gallons of fuel, $3. 6 billion in fuel costs, 14. 7 MMT of carbon dioxide, 215, 000 tons of oxides of nitrogen (NOx) and 8, 000 tons of particulate matter. By joining this partnership, Domino’s Supply Chain division is working towards more environmental efficient freight shipment.