Store manager of 2 years.
Done the lot, dough boy, delivering, instore and now managing.
Can give an insight to coorporate/franchisee life.
Will give general ideas but not specific figures.
I speak from QLD, but 99% of my answers should go for all AU/NZ.
AMA.
Boilerplate: these are my views, not the company's.
Prices are not on the "pizzas to be made" screen. Unless you personally take the order, it will be made as usual, and even then, it will be made as usual as the staff have no equity in food costs/profit etc and thus wouldn't care… Some dodgier stores may train that way, but none of mine. And HO want every single pizza out the door the same, so there's no policy on this either.
Garlic bread haven't changed in last year. That being said, new stock rollout takes a few weeks so unless my stores about to receive their first boxes soon I don't think so. Neither have I seen any posts on the internal system about it. There was talk of new garlic bread bags a few weeks back so it might seem smaller in comparison to the new bags, otherwise no.
Screen has a blue star for online orders next to the name. they might think if they ordered online, they must have used a voucher.
We can see if it's online order without the price but again, we're more concerned with making it correct and quick than what they paid.
Why would the employee care who paid what though, doesn't make a difference in their pay. If I was working at dominios I'd be staaaacking up the toppings!
I'm doing an anonymous AMA. I have nothing to gain from giving "company correct" answers. As I have said above, skimping on toppings on discounted pizzas is not our policy and generally not done.
If toppings are an issue for you, chase it up with the store or HO.
5 time 4 is 20. And you have 20 downvotes. One of those numbers must have been a negative.
Pizza hut definitely skimps out on toppings for coupon codes
Dominos doesnt
I believe that's why pizza hut dropped in popularity compared to dominos in Australia…
The first time I paid full price for pizza hut, there was actually enough cheese on it to make it stringy
My first job was working at Domino's and I never got told to put less on voucher code pizzas. What I did get told was for those cheaper basic pizzas (eg $5 pick up or whatever they are now) to put less, my manager would always say you get what you pay for and higher paying will get more because we want them to come back. Being 15 at the time I just did what I was told, but seems like a pretty dodgy practice I guess.
How much did you hate the 8 meats pizza and all the variations it could make?
Were you around when they did the 'game changer' campaign where they changed literally nothing at all? Was it a massive joke to you all?
Glad the 8 meats is gone as someone that had to make them, miss them as a consumer. It was a good joke when someone ordered an 8 meats and got rid of the meats, oblivious there is a cheese pizza?!??!?!
Was around back then, many many jokes made at the marketing team's defense back then, they're still a laugh if I can be honest…
8 Meats was my favorite :(
I never customized it.
Why did they get rid of it?
You've got eight sets of 25g of meat, that's 200g of meat for a fairly competitive price point, we phased out chorizo and switching chorizo with steak to make up the eight meats was going to be too costly so they culled it. Which is strange because it was in our top ten sold pizzas.
How does one become a manager at Dominos? from what I've heard some store owners move employees over to a manager position as the pay is less than other staff, is this true?
It's always promoted from within. For me, I was an exceptional delivery driver, asked questions about the running of the business, got noticed. Pay is less that other staff if you're considering the extra responsibilities (i.e the payrise isn't worth what you're now responsible for) however, on an absolute basis, it's a payrise. I took it because I wanted it as a resume item rather than the payrise.
What crust would you recommend on Dominos pizza
I always go for thin, I love a crispy pizza and it tastes better. This is because thin bases use a different flower mix with more fat in it to help it crisp up in the oven. That's right, common misconception, you're better off going classic base than thin if you're on a diet.
THANK YOU! I've always wondered why the thin base had higher kJ than the classic base. I thought it was a mistake on the nutritional fact sheet at first.
How much profit do you make on a $5 pepperoni pizza? Did the large pizza recently get smaller?
It was more than a year ago now that pizzas shrunk. The rule of thumb for a franchisee is a $5 pizza comes to about 20c profit. So if a single $5 is a mistake and needs to be made again, you're wiping out 24 other $5 pizza's profit.
I.e there's such a slim margin and there's a huge internal debate going on about them as we speak (you may notice some $5 pizzas have jumped up a small bit)
Are you talking $0.20 gross profit or profit?
Net, includes maintenance, tax, fees, yadda yadda
@AustriaBargain: I think this is common in businesses. Hypothetically, if you sold all your pizzas at "cost price" (only the cost of pizza ingredients), you should break even, but you won't because there are other costs (eg. wages, rent, logistics) involved.
@AustriaBargain: Seeing as you aren't convinced, I'll give you more info.
Food cost is ~$2.2, labour ~$1, pizza box ~40c.
Add on GST, franchise royalties and you're close to 20c net profit anyway.
@dasher86: Yeah it’s surprisingly cheap to make a pizza. The other costs like rent, gas, wages are all needing to be paid anyway. You can’t say oh we didn’t sell as many pizzas today so Jim you can go hole an hour earlier than my roster said”. Jim has to be paid to be there whether he’s making pizzas or not. So each additional pizza sale is profit on top of those other costs, every ad or social media posts that prompts someone to buy an additional pizza is easy money. Each pizza sold is worth more than the last one was because your costs are paid and you get to keep most of the money on the next one. This only applies if you’re a profit sharer, if you’re not a profit sharer then you only get your wage/salary, no matter how many pizzas you sell or don’t sell. Each pizza sold is worth an additional $0 to you as a non profit sharing worker.
@dasher86: You can't look at gross margin in seclusion when pricing. Cost management and pricing policies vary between industries but essentially allocate all the overheads to products - for a very good reason too, which is to ensure that a net profit can actually be made given a forecast sales volume.
@dasher86: 48% food cost margin is terrible in the food industry. You have zero idea what your talking about.
@User301387: COGS of $2.20 hahaha
Either Domino's have something very wrong in their supply chain or you don't actually know your costs (assuming the success of Domino's globally I would go with the later)
It's not a fair or useful look at how much each additional pizza makes you and costs you
Why not? Every pizza that is ruined and not sold means that the costs need to be amortised over the other pizzas that are sold. Therefore if one pizza is thrown away every other pizza's costs go up a bit more. You can't just say oh the costs need to be paid anyway.
@cheng2008: The cost of ingredients sure. But not the cost of rent or the gas for the oven or the franchise fee or even workers unless they were being slammed at the time.
@AustriaBargain: What I mean is that the cost of rent/gas/whatever is paid as a lump sum, but it's amortised over all the pizzas sold. So if a pizza is thrown away, that's one less pizza that the cost can be amortised over. Which means it still counts in the pizza cost.
@cheng2008: But it’s not actually amortised. It’s not like if a pizza is dropped then you scoop up the rent and gas portion of that pizza and then scrape it into the replacement pizza. Or actually it is like that.
What store? Let's see how "quality" your pizzas really are…
Modern poetry at its best.
English much?
Most food chains should use their parent company's distribution and supplier network. The actual cost of ingredients should be far lower than what you quote, but they should be loaded with distribution costs and profit so the parent company is profitable and can absorb pricing shocks.
The price the franchise is charged should be between wholesale and retail.
$10+8+5+10+12 = $45
$45/25 = $1.80
$45/30 = $1.50
OP quoted $2.20 for ingredients, which makes sense as franchises milk their franchisee's in every way they can.
@This Guy: I am agree with cost of pizza but not agree with margin of profit what he says obviously it's depend on sales and hourly wages. If sales goes up at same labour cost then not make 20 cents per pizza.
Why did no voucher codes work at my local Dominoes today?
I was shocked (oK mildly miffed for a minute or two) to pay full price, probably will give the store a miss for a while as I have got used to discounted pizza. $16 for one pizza pick up at 3:30 was a little OTT.
Could be a couple things
If you can look past talking to someone, give the store a ring, they're usually accommodating.
yeh, all the vouchers on Oz B were for 'other" stores.
Will try ringing next time! thanks
why would you ever eat Dominos without a voucher!
yeh agree,I was caught short. i had told the kids to pick one up on their way to football, told them all they had to do was pick it up at 3:30….. when I ordered the thing and no vouchers were available, the thought in cancelling the pizza to save $4 and loss of dad kudos was an externality to great to bare. I wont be doing it again!
You paid full price and still opted for Domino's?
Logistics
I'll get back to you if you have a summary for me.
Domino's stores around the US getting orders for a single coke to be picked up through the website and the guy never shows up. The mystery gets investigated. If I tell you the answer it would spoil it.
Undercover boss style?
Click bait af
Domino's stores around the US getting orders for a single coke to be picked up through the website
I have done that multiple times around Sydney when I was testing Domino's app and whether all the payment methods were working as designed. I was getting paid for this work plus the reimbursement of the cost of soft drink. Many times though - I didn't bother picking up the soft drink. I know many of my colleagues in NZ, UK and US did similar things…i.e order but don't pick up.
When you feel like pizza, where do you order from?
I'll run up the road and make one at my store myself :)
so, you don't trust the mass made pizzas?
.
If I'm particularly lazy I'll order it from home then pick it up, my staff make fine pizzas. Mostly go in to check up on how things are going.
What's your salary?
Less than Don Meji's
I remember when Don was newly appointed as CEO. One of the "competitions" us staff could "win", was to ride in his lambo with him. Sick prize!
You're not the first person I've heard that from. What a legend haha.
What did you do for a crust before Domino's?
He went to Crust
How much does it cost to open a franchise and how profitable overall are they? Any interesting delivery stories?
Cost? Head office covers a surprising amount of upfront costs.
Profitability? At the moment? I wouldn't buy one.
Delivery stories, good fun
Thanks for actually answering and so promptly. Haha deep down inside I was hoping for a scene just like from the erotic movies…
Like what ball park $ amount would someone need to have to set up a franchise. What is the royalties structure like?
Stores can go from 400k-1m.
1.5% of sales goes to DPE International
6% goes to Dominos AU
1% goes to "ad fund"
Pulling these of the top of my head, might vary +-1%.
Had one of my guys get hit by a car door whilst going down the bike lane, car owner filed an insurance claim for damage to their door
Don't delivery drivers on motor bikes know it's illegal to use a bicycle lane?
I don't know about you but nearly every dominos delivery comes by push bike now.
@Hardicus: its ridiculous. Saw some poor bastid riding in the rain.
Can't they get a hatchback for them? Or at least an ebike?
Some delivery drivers/riders ride around a ebikes
Two part question:
My local Dominos has this one staff member who is exceptional, knows me by name and we always have a chat when I go to pickup my pizza. Sometimes I'll come in to pickup my pizza and there will be a long queue, without even saying anything, he grabs my pizza, quickly says hi and bye as he hands it to me. I absolutely love him and his work ethic. So my questions are:
From my experience, the staff member is far more likely to get their feedback if they're from a coorporate store. Otherwise, the feedback team post all positive reviews about staff to an internal page where people can then tag the direct staff member. I.e there's a good chance they'll see it. There's an even better chance if you make an order online and then leave a review of the staff member afterwards in the feedback section since that goes straight to the store/his manager.
No policies on gifts, I'm sure he'd love it! Cheers for taking care of him, extremely thankless job.
I'll make sure to drop some feedback on my next online order then. No problems, it's refreshing to see such fine customer service as it definitely adds to the experience :)
Google review on the particular store and name the individual
Is the guy called Vince?
Is there anything on the menu you would avoid?
(say like: you we're chatting with friends / family, they wanted to order dominoes, someone suggests "I feel like the 'xyz' order some!" and you'd instantly go "nah, nah, nah - trust me you don't want 'xyz').
Are the non crumbed chicken wings boiled? I almost every single time I order them I disappoint myself by forgetting how much they disappointed me last time.
Honestly, I eat everything, if anything I avoid the avo, we get it shipped frozen and it then sits in a fridge and they're super rubbery and eh…
All meats are precooked, with regards to the wings, they're labelled "oven roasted" chicken wings, how they're precooked, don't know.
idk how to word this without sound like an (profanity).
What's your personal thoughts when comparing a good local pizza joint to dominoes?
Have you ever had customers ask you why the pizza is so small and what was your response?
Not many local's around me, the one place I do have has this gimmicky 1m pizza, that comes with no cheese and it was forgettable.
Often do, I just sigh and get on their level and go "head office just trying to make more money, we've got not say in it, sucks for both of us ehy". We're trained to go "we've made changes to our menu to fit more in, if you wanted a larger size, we've got our extra large for $3 more, because we believe in charging you more for what you used to get as standard" can't remember if the last part is official…
"that comes with no cheese"
Yeah that sounds terrible and nothing like my local ones here, im more talking about the places where your salivating like you're in a cartoon about how good it is and now im thinking about it lol
Why are the pizzas now coming slightly undercooked? The last couple of times I've ordered, the dough has still been incredibly doughy in the middle. Can the ovens be set for a couple minutes longer?
Head office are so concerned with cutting down delivery time, they'll undercook pizzas if it saves 1 minute on delivery. They've invested lots of money into fast ovens, there's one in Brissy that'll cook a pizza in 3 minutes. That being said, we get randomly audited every quarter, and one of the tests is the temperature of the middle of the pizza after it comes out of the oven, there's lots of ramifications if it doesn't reach 75 degrees, but there's no ramifications if the dough is "doughy". Some stores send out very dark pizzas, others chewy, ovens become hotter/cooler over time and will produce different results. The other issue is, some people like them chewy (one Italian wants me to put it in half way, it comes out where the cheese isn't even melted), some like them burnt, can't please everyone. If it's an issue, tell someone next you're there, otherwise leave feedback on your online order, otherwise leave a complaint on the FB page. There's an option in the order taker for the pizza to be well done if you order in store, otherwise get there slightly early and tell them you want it well done and they'll put it back in half way for you.
How would you rate the quality of ingredients from Dominos?
Having worked at other hospitality places prior, very impressed. The few subpar ingredients are avocado and there's often bits of grissel in the steak, very occasionally we'll get some watery onions but we've got good ties with manufactures and purchase enough volume to have a large input into the products. At the scale we buy (e.g a literal tonne of cheese out of my store every month) there's bound to be a few things out of place, but worst example coming to mind was a piece of bacon that wasn't cut and was about a cm thick. 4/5
Didn't disappoint - got a really good answer :D
Bucket list ticked?
How many of the ingredients are Australian? Also, the meats, like bacon, what’s the % of Aust content if it’s made is Aus?
Thanks.
Do Domino's have their staff use less toppings for those using voucher codes…it always seems that way. And can you confirm the garlic bread have become smaller the last few weeks