Don Meij, the tech-savvy CEO of the leading pizza franchise brand in Australia has a knack for garnering media coverage with attention-grabbing digital developments and concepts.
But the focus really is the food, he says.
In an interview with SmartCompany Meij says, “I’ve heard people call Domino’s a technology company. We’re not. We’re a food company.”
What the business does is solve the customers’ problems – and that is achieved through data, he says.
“A lot of businesses become process-driven. At Domino’s we used to use our intuition, now we’ve moved to data.”
He admits Domino’s slipped in its business performance back in 2007 because it didn’t listen to customers.
“We were becoming like a beer company with the triple cheese, eight meat pizzas,” he says.
The business reinvigorated a broader menu that served a wider spectrum of customers.
But while Meij reiterates the importance of the food focus, there’s no doubt the business has, as he says “gone beyond pizza”.
Earlier this year Domino’s introduced an innovation hub at its head office; has a delivery fleet of electric bikes, scooters and cars – the much-vaunted drone is yet to make a commercial delivery.
Speed and efficiencies are critical to the business which has a mantra ‘Slow when it matters, fast when it counts’ and in February this year some stores were achieving 80 percent of their sales digitally.
The latest development has been On Time Cooking, what Meij describes as “the GPS tracker of pick up”, allowing pizza cooking to be timed to the arrival of the customer.
Meij has grown up in the pizza industry, starting his career as a delivery driver, and can reflect on the actions that bring success:
3 tips on achieving success
- A good manager is a great influencer who can get the most out of a team
- Managing franchisees before stepping up to executive roles gives you empathy for the franchisee’s role in the business
- You have to put in the hard yards as a chief executive, there’s no easy ride