People who are loyal to specific fast food chains all have their own reasons. Maybe the service stands out. Maybe the chain has nostalgic associations. Being the restaurant with the best food would probably go a long way. Domino’s Pizza wants you to believe that it has the “most delicious food.” Addressing shareholders in its 2023 annual report, the pizza chain revealed that it’s doubling down on quality. This will involve new menu items and a shift towards advertising that highlights the taste of the products.
It’s all part of Domino’s new “Hungry for MORE” strategy. The acronym stands for “Most delicious food, Operational excellence, Renewed value, and Enhanced by best-in-class franchises.” The goal? To drive “MORE sales, MORE stores, MORE profits.” New Domino’s products are a rarity, but the brand is focusing more on innovation. In Australia, that has meant offering a pork belly barbecue pizza. A shrimp-topped pizza launched in Korea. Americans got more crust options with Domino’s new New York-style pizza. More new menu items are coming.
Intrigued customers don’t need to rush. CEO Russell J. Weiner told Food Business News that these new additions are permanent menu items, not limited time offers. While many chains lean into blink-and-you’ll-miss-it promotions, Weiner believes that quality and consistency go hand-in-hand. He explained that new releases every few months entails “retraining your staff on a new product, which means their amount of training on the existing product is not maybe where it should be.”
Domino’s has had to convince customers before
This isn’t the first time that Domino’s marketing has doubled down on the quality of the food. Despite wild success in the 1980’s, the company was facing bankruptcy by 2008. Why? One glaring reason is that its pizzas were bad — infamously bad. Focus groups compared the crust to cardboard. The Onion released a satirical video claiming that the chain was part of a “30-year study testing the limits of what human beings will eat.”
In response, the chain focused on improving its products. It released videos acknowledging its bad reputation — complete with actual footage from brutally honest focus groups — and announced that Domino’s was completely redoing its recipes with a focus on quality. Sales exploded. In the years since its struggles, the company has vaulted to its current position as the biggest pizza chain in the world.
Despite the pizza chain’s popularity, the past few years have brought lagging delivery sales for Domino’s. This time around, the brand is keeping its old recipes and focusing on the quality that revived it in the past. As Russell Weiner Restaurant Business, “The product still scores amazing. It’s a great product. But we can romance it more.”
