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More cheese has benefited Domino's (audio) (11/12/2009)


Putting more cheese on its pizzas has paid off for Domino’s Pizza.

The cheese-enhanced American Legends pizzas now account for a double-digit share of the company’s pizza sales, and the share is growing, according to company chairman and CEO Dave Brandon. He would not specify the exact double-digit share that it currently holds in the product mix, but added, “When you talk about a product that achieves double-digit mix in its first year of introduction, that is big.”


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And, when you consider that Domino’s has about 5,000 stores in the U.S. and completes about 700,000 transactions each night, there are "a lot of people ordering that product consistently over a broad spectrum of consumers,” he told Dairy Herd Management in an exclusive interview.

Through the third quarter of this year, the amount of traffic (or number of customers) is up from a year ago, he said. That is a turnaround of a three-year trend, not only for Domino’s as a brand but for the pizza category overall, he said. In other words, Domino’s performance compares very favorably to its competitors.

“We believe we’re leading the league right now in terms of our performance and traffic pattern,” he said. And, the partnership that Domino's has forged with the dairy industry is one of the reasons why, he added.

Last February, Dairy Management Inc., which manages the national dairy-checkoff program, announced it would spend approximately $12 million over the next two years to help Domino’s market the American Legends pizzas.

Brandon offered these additional points to those attending the National Milk Producers Federation/Dairy Management Inc. annual meeting last week:
  • Domino’s is planning to expand a school-lunch pizza pilot program from a single Denver school district this year to something national in scope next year. Fresh pizza would be delivered on the school-lunch lines. The intent here is to give children better-tasting pizza than what they would be getting through traditional school-lunch channels. Hopefully, the children will become better pizza consumers, and that will help the dairy industry because a lot of cheese is used on pizzas.
  • In late October, Domino’s “More cheese for less dough” promotion was a success, In fact, it was “the best sales week we’ve had for years,” Brandon says. The promotion offered customers a chance to buy one-topping pizzas with more cheese on them for $5.99.
  • The inclusion of American Legends pizzas, with 40 percent more cheese than Domino’s other pizzas, is “lifting the quality image of our brand,” Brandon said.

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