How to reinvent franchising with tech and transparency

We’re preparing the launch of our “cutting-edge futuristic pizzeria” in Hangzhou. We call it this because there will be so many innovations—at least, for our company. We’re going to open a pizza shop of a completely new kind.

Dodo Pizza’s been working in China for two years. Our team has gotten some experience, which now gives us the courage to take risks and try to disrupt the market. Today we have the knowledge, resources, and team needed for such a task. It will be our first corporate, company-owned pizza shop in China, because it’s us and not our franchisees who have to take risks and make experiments in new markets.

I won’t disclose that many details of this project before our launch besides those I shared before. As I mentioned, there will be no cashiers in this pizza shop. All of the orders will go through our app on WeChat. But there is one more thing I want to talk about before our grand opening, because we’ll need to find experienced partners to implement this idea.

The idea relates to our interior design. So what is it?

We want the interior to create an entirely new customer experience. Its main feature will be video design. There will be wall-sized screens all over the pizzeria that will create a unique video experience for our guests. The pizzeria will be changing its color following images on the screens—from orange to green to purple… The screens will be showing crazy “Asian” graphics, lifestyle short movies, our commercials… Energetic, rhythmical music in the pizzeria will be in sync with the rhythms of the videos. All this will create a unique ambience of a futuristic pizza shop. This concept will incite our guests to taste our pizza and will add even more value to our product.

First, we’re looking for an experienced engineering company that can install and set up these screens. If you are sure you can do it, e‑mail me directly at fedor@dodopizza.com. Second, we’ll need studios and freelancers to create videos. We’ll need a lot of them, so our team is prepared to work with a few artists simultaneously. There is a demand for different types of work: stop-motion, animated collages, 2D graphics, photo-animations, videomapping, etc. Send your portfolio to Alina Askarova at a.askarova@dodopizza.com (add “Video for China” in the subject).

See you later!