Leave Pizza to the Pros — Pizza has a special place in my heart and is on the list of my favorite foods. I’m sure many of you are in the same boat.
While I’m no Dave Portnoy, I do tend to judge pizza based on a single slice. I’ll start with just our boring ol’ Cheese or Margherita, and if it’s any good, we can think about diversification.
The major big pizza chains in the US have had relative success in making money and feeding customers for the last few decades. Pizza Hut, Little Caesars, Papa John’s. You’ve probably tried most of them.
If you’re an investor, you may have considered throwing money into Domino’s Pizza. They’re a fintech platform-meets pizza chain. It’s arguably one of the more cutting-edge brands when it comes to bringing a tolerable delivery experience to the customer.
Americans eat a lot of pizza, and usually, we don’t complain too much about its quality. But, Italy is a different story. Allegedly it’s the birthplace of pizza. I dated someone from Jersey, and I thought she was a pizza snob. But Italians put her to shame. They just prefer a more artisanal pizza experience, apparently.
Case and point: Domino’s just closed its last franchise in Italy after seven years of struggling to gain a foothold in the market. EPizza SpA, a Domino’s brand that operated exclusively in Italy, originally planned to open nearly 1000 pizzerias by 2030.
Competition from local restaurants, as well as forced lockdowns, crippled the brand. Food delivery apps in Italy also changed the delivery game, eating into ePizza’s margins and making it hard to make the kind of money that they were used to in North America. After the better part of a decade, Domino’s finally gave up on the struggle.
Look at the balls on these bulls, trying to sell big box pizza to Italians. As a pizza connoisseur, when I get Domino’s, it’s not about quality or taste; it’s about convenience.
Their original goal was to bring delivery pizza to Italy, but the competition brought delivery everything to that market before Domino’s could get off the ground.
Finally, it would appear that Domino’s corporate gets to eat some humble pizza pie.
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