How to reinvent franchising with tech and transparency

Last week, Bloomberg published a story about Dodo Pizza.

Here are a few quotes from the article.

• An archaeologist by education, Ovchinnikov, 38, and his franchisees have opened 457 pizzerias in Russia and 69 in 11 other countries… Now he’s planning to add another 1,000 in Europe, Asia and Africa over the next five years, a goal few people in the industry doubt he can achieve. That’s because of a secret sauce that isn’t edible, but ethereal—Dodo IS, a proprietary mix of application software and analytics stored in the cloud.
• Overseen by a “chief agile officer” and maintained by 120 technicians, Dodo IS provides, among many other things, instant monitoring of cash flows, inventories and service times at every location in the network, all viewable with just a few taps on a tablet… “We’re a cyborg company,” Ovchinnikov said in an interview at Dodo’s headquarters in Moscow. “We’re half food and half tech. That’s our advantage. We’re incredibly efficient.”
• Ovchinnikov recently sold the franchise rights for Nigeria to Quality Foods Africa, the same group of British investors that brought Krispy Kreme to that continent’s most populous country last year. QFA Director Alex Trotter said the first of a planned 20 Dodos will open this month in Lagos.

• This summer, Ovchinnikov blogged in painful detail about the mistakes, since corrected, that he made in opening the first corporate Dodo in China, his “primary market of the future” along with Britain. That outlet, in the e‑commerce hub of Hangzhou, is a cashless, non-delivery, fully touch-screen operation with a unique menu designed for local tastes.
• Dodo has hundreds of investors and franchisees have thousands more as a result of crowdfunding, though Ovchinnikov retains more than 50 percent ownership. One of those shareholders is also one of the biggest names in pizza—Steve Green, a former Domino’s franchisee in the U.S. who now runs PMQ, the industry’s leading trade publication and advisory firm. “Fyodor is the Steve Jobs of pizza,” Green said.

Read the story on Bloomberg.