ANN ARBOR, MICH. — Dominos said its “Hungry for MORE” strategy helped the company deliver more sales, stores and profits in the first quarter of 2024.
During an April 29 earnings call, Russell J. Weiner, chief executive officer of Dominos, dug deeper into the company’s first-quarter results using each of the “MORE” pillars in the Hungry for MORE strategy.
The first pillar, M, stands for “most delicious food,” which Weiner said Dominos accomplished through product innovations and marketing.
“We know we have the most delicious food in the industry and are focused on showcasing that with more mouthwatering food photography in all of our marketing and sales channels,” Weiner said. “We also ran a campaign that highlighted our pan pizza, a premium product that brought news to this cross type for the first time since 2014.”
Weiner said Dominos made headway within its O pillar, which stands for “operational excellence,” through the roll out of a new service program.
“This is how we’ll deliver on our promise to have the most delicious food by consistently driving a great experience with our products,” Weiner said. “As I shared on our last earnings call, in 2024 we’re rolling out a new service program. We’re calling more delicious operations, a series of three product training sprints that focused on our dough, how we build and make our products and how we cook them. In Q1, we embarked on our first sprint, which focused on our dough and rolled this out across all 6,800-plus stores in the US. We continue to see benefits from our service initiatives. And in Q1, we actually delivered more pizzas than we did in Q1 of last year at improved delivery times.”
For the R pillar, which stands for “renowned value,” Weiner discussed consumer friendly discounts and the company’s rewards program.
“I want to expand on what renowned value means to us at Domino’s,” Weiner said. “It’s not about just having the lowest price in the market, it’s about providing value that’s innovative and that’s memorable. Renowned value breaks through the … discounts that you see in the marketplace. Value the buy one, get one free. Renowned value reinvents this mechanic and creates emergency pizza. Emergency pizza performed better than any buy one, get one free in my career, (and) was a meaningful driver to our comps in both Q4 of ’23 and in Q1. And it not only drove increased orders, but also the acquisition of members into our loyalty program.”
Finally, Weiner discussed the E pillar, which stands for “enhanced by our best-in-class franchisees.”
“We’ll be hosting thousands of franchisees for our worldwide rally in May, where we plan to bring our Hungry for MORE strategy to life across our global system,” Weiner said. “I can’t wait for that gathering as our franchisees are what makes Domino’s so special. They were the inspiration behind Hungry for MORE.”
Weiner said the first quarter results demonstrate how the Hungry for MORE strategy is resonating with customers and is confident that Dominos can deliver against short- and long-term strategy goals as well as “drive significant value creation for our shareholders.”
Dominos said its net income during the first quarter ended March 24 was $125.8 million, equal to $3.58 per share on the common stock, up 20% from $104.8 million, or $2.93 per share, in the same period a year ago. Total revenues in the first quarter increased to $1.08 billion, up 5.9% from $1.02 billion a year ago.