Dodo Meetup 2018: last year’s key results and achievements
16 August 2018
Maxim Kotin
Chief storyteller
Every summer, Dodo Pizza holds an event for its partners and managers where we sum up the results of the previous year, present new products, and set ambitious new goals. This year, around 1,400 people took part in the gathering. Here is a recap of what was said on stage by Fyodor Ovchinnikov, Dodo Pizza founder and CEO, about Dodo’s most significant achievements in the 2017/2018 season.
Having increased its sales by 131%, Dodo Pizza now has grounds to consider itself one of the fastest-growing pizza chains in the world.
91% of the company’s revenue comes from Russia, and this number hasn’t changed within the last year despite our massive growth in Russia, Dodo’s home market. It means that other countries are keeping up with the pace.
4.22% of our sales come from Kazakhstan, which saw an impressive 227% growth in nation-wide revenue.
Everything we’ve done to bolster our business model bears fruit—average monthly sales per pizzeria more than one year old increased by 36% from 2.774M rubles in July 2017 to 3.879M rubles in June 2018.
Within a year, Dodo Pizza invested around $3 million in Dodo IS, our own IT system that runs every pizza shop in our chain. It’s a record number, yet this year, we rolled out fewer new features than in previous years. All the efforts were focused on rebuilding our IT infrastructure and making it ready for further growth.
A year ago, the managing company chose five key projects and goals to work on, and our team showed significant progress in each area.
1. Management system
Our management system was obviously inferior to our competitors’, who had decades of experience under their belt. Within the last 12 months, our team studied the best practices of our partners, unified them, and put together an online training program and assessment system for our general managers to ensure the same management standards across the board.
2. Profitability
A year ago, we decided to focus on profitability of a single pizzeria. Since then, our financial gurus created an optimal business model for one Dodo unit. We now can compare every pizzeria in the chain to this model. We know what factors influence profits. And we now assess every decision we make based on how it impacts this financial business model.
3. Taste
Our team wanted to make a breakthrough in taste—and did it. Refined ingredients, revamped pizza recipes, new seasonal pizzas, snacks, and a united coffee supplier—all these improvements made our menu more competitive than ever before. We are now confident that we can keep up with our global competitors, who also focus on providing the best taste and quality.
4. Digital marketing
When we held the Dodo Meetup 2017, our pizza shops were already digital savvy when it came to marketing, but 100% of our promos in digital channels were local. Within the last year, we set up a centralized digital marketing system that now serves our partners as an internal one-stop digital agency. 80% of our franchisees participate in the program.
5. Brand
Building a strong, nationally recognized brand was another important task we assigned to ourselves. And it entailed making significant efforts on all fronts. We re-thought our facades, introduced new packaging, made new uniforms for kitchen crew and drivers, created posters to enrich our communication inside our pizza shops, and set up a “live” online brandbook. In spring 2018, we also launched our first national TV campaign.
This is the first piece of a three-part series where we’re sharing some highlights from the Dodo Pizza Meetup 2018. In the next posts, we’ll take a closer look into the results of our first nationwide TV campaign and introduce our five key projects for the next 12 months.