When Patrick Doyle came on board as CEO of Domino’s Pizza in 2010 he vowed to transform the struggling pizza company into a “Technology-Enabled, Nimble, Category Disrupting Machine.”
We’re not sure what that means either, but the company Doyle has re-built in the past 6 years is probably pretty close to that vision.
It all started with a little marketing…
The company’s turnaround began with the re-branding campaign, “Oh Yes We Did,” in which executives read brutal customer comments on camera like an episode of “Mean Tweets” on Jimmy Kimmel.
Turn out this was exactly the closure that Domino’s and their customers needed to move on from their “cardboard crust” past.
As a result of this transparency, Domino’s stock price began to rise, and under Doyle’s leadership, has shot from nearly $8 per share to $160.
Focusing on the delivery, not just the pizza
Doyle’s philosophy that Domino’s is a technology company disguised as a food chain means that 50% of the employees at their Ann Arbor headquarters work in software analytics.
It also means that they’re constantly churning out new ways to put piping hot pizza in your mouth. Some recent innovations out of the Domino’s braintrust:
- Ordering by tweeting or texting a pizza emoji
- Drone delivery
- Opening a store in Italy (the motherland)
Bold moves for a once-disgraced delivery franchise, and Doyle’s ability to rally employees around a cause likely has a lot to do with it.
“Failure is an option”
Contrary to the mantra of your typical CEO, Doyle believes that giving employees room to fail allows Domino’s to be more creative than the competition.
In other words, when you’re playing it safe, you’re playing to lose. Amen, Patrick.
