For Domino’s Pizza, cracking the international code for success hasn’t been as difficult as one might think for a pseudo-Italian food that is about as American as apple pie. Pizza is a surprisingly translatable meal around the world.
“The joy of pizza is that bread, sauce and cheese works fundamentally everywhere, except maybe China, where dairy wasn’t a big part of their diet until lately,” J. Patrick Doyle, Domino’s CEO, told me recently. “And it’s easy to just change toppings market to market. In Asia, it’s seafood and fish. It’s curry in India. But half the toppings are standard offerings around the world.”
So, Domino’s is capitalizing on the “joy of pizza” almost everywhere. The company just posted domestic same-store sales growth of nearly 5 percent during the fiscal fourth quarter and about the same percentage for its international stores for that period and for the full fiscal year. It was the 76th straight quarter of same-store sales growth abroad.
In fact, when Ann Arbor, Mich.-based Domino’s opened its 10,000th store last year, the site wasn’t in Wichita, Kan., or Sarasota, Fla.; it was a franchisee-owned outlet in Istanbul.