How to reinvent franchising with tech and transparency

As you know, we are planning to open our first corporate pizzeria in Hangzhou, the Internet capital of China. We call this project “the pizzeria of the future”. Why? Because it will be a unique experiment designed specifically for modern China. There will be no cashiers, and all orders will be processed via the WeChat messenger. The key element of our design will be media screens showing our product ads—and those ads won’t be what the European pizza market is accustomed to. We will serve every pizza-for-one in a beautifully designed small box, and it will be oblong rather than round. In Moscow, such product is sometimes known as “pinza.” There will be pizza with crawfish, duck, tofu, fresh mango, and avocado, and even M&M’s on our menu.

From time to time, I will tell you the latest about our Hangzhou project and also show you a few things. We’ve already started the rough-in there, and the final design draft is just about ready.

This is how it looks at the moment. Those purple panels are media screens. In our pizzeria, the interior and video design will be one and the same. The pizzeria will be changing its colors constantly; when you see an avocado pizza, the pizzeria is green; a mango pizza, it’s yellow, etc. You just can’t walk by—you simply have to come in and try it.

The opening will be in spring of 2019, and meanwhile, you can look around our pizzeria here.