Get busy
But before Doyle and his team could chuckle at the New Coke references, there was still a great deal of work to be done. In December 2009, Domino’s had to retrain 4,900 franchises on how to make a pizza. Corporate leadership had to ensure that the old ingredients ran out and new ingredients were stocked as close as possible to the changeover period, which was the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, when Domino’s rolled out their first ad campaign touting the new pizza.
It was a massive logistical balancing act, and it had to be carried out in the span of several weeks.
“We trained a hundred trainers, they each had 50 stores to cover, and there are typically two to three people in each store who are making the pizzas,” Doyle says. “We’d have the trainers organize the pizza makers into groups of 10 to 15 people per day. Over the span of a couple of weeks, each trainer probably trained about 150 people. You just get the people into a store and go to work. You show them how to do it, and you don’t let them leave until you’re confident they can do it right.”
The scope of the transition didn’t allow for a completely clean break between old and new. There was a period of about a week just before Christmas when a given store could have been selling the old pizza or the new.
Despite the months upon months of research, communication and training, Doyle still had a knot in his stomach as the initial rollout was taking place. Despite overwhelming evidence that the consumers wanted an improved pizza from Domino’s, there was no fallback plan if it failed. Doyle and his staff had to completely commit to the new product, because they were going to finish destroying the reputation of the old product by openly admitting its inadequacy. It was an all-or-nothing proposition.
“I remember one of the meetings with the franchisees,” Doyle says. “One of our greatest franchisees raised his hand and asked a great question: ‘I’m on board with the changes, but what do you do if this doesn’t work?’ All I could do was laugh and say, ‘My successor will have a really hard time dealing with that.’ There was no Plan B. There couldn’t be. On the plus side, when you’re facing something like that, it does tend to help you focus more.”
Domino’s, which generated $6.2 billion in global sales in 2010, also rolled out a similar product change in Mexico. The company’s overseas markets were not altered because they already use different ingredients from those used in North America.
