Domino’s Pizza CEO Says Order Pizza Through the Phone is Near Obsolete

Many people will remember a time when if they wanted to order a pizza, they would first dial a number on their phone and place the order for delivery.

Those days are pretty much gone now when ordering a pizza has become super easy online and through our smart phones.

Domino’s Pizza CEO Ritch Allison agrees and this week he told CNBC’s Jim Cramer that over 75% of orders being placed with the company are through digital channels. This is up from 70% prior to COVID-19.

The phone is ringing less at Domino’s Pizza locations but demand is still high says Allison.

Speaking in a “Mad Money” interview, the CEO had said, “As we look forward, those are the kinds of movements that happened during Covid that we don’t believe are going back. Once customers shift to digital ordering, they don’t go back to calling restaurants on the phone.”

“We feel really well-positioned from a technology standpoint, and with the market still so very fragmented, there’s a lot of share to be gained broadly across the market as we see it,” Allison added.

Allison’s company is expanding its store count and installing new technologies to make ordering and receiving food faster and easier. For example, in Houston, the company is testing out an autonomous vehicle delivery system in a partnership with Nuro.

Domino’s Pizza had reported its financial results on Thursday morning, revealing that global retail sales were up 16.7 % from the year ago quarter. Same-store sales in the U.S. had jumped 13.4%

Allison had said on the earnings call, “Our US business performed extremely well during the quarter, highlighted by 15.3% retail sales growth and a 13.4% comp. This marked our 40th consecutive quarter of positive US same-store sales growth. We continue to see strong growth across our business in the first quarter and we did not witness any material differences between those markets that have largely reopened versus those that have remained more restricted. We certainly saw some sales benefits from the federal government stimulus at the beginning and at the end of Q1, which were partially offset by the negative impact of the significant winter storms in February that impacted such a large portion of the country.”

He added, “Due to the positive sales impacts from the stimulus, we elected not to run any of our aggressive boost week promotions during the quarter, but instead, we remain focused on providing great service and offering great value to our customers every day. Now, like many of you, we are also watching the two-year stack on US same-store sales. At 15% for the first quarter, we saw a slight sequential improvement of the two-year stack when compared to the fourth quarter of 2020. Given the Covid overlaps, we will continue to look at the business through both the one-and-two-year lenses as we report to you throughout 2021.”

Disclaimer: We have no position in any of the companies mentioned and have not been compensated for this article.