How to reinvent franchising with tech and transparency

“I wouldn't be that surprised if aliens landed near my house next week,” a friend told me the other day. “When the whole world goes into lockdown, there is no space left for science fiction anymore. Anything now seems possible.”Which makes it even harder to predict how things will shake out in the long term.

Yet it would be nice to have at least some insight into our post-COVID19 future, especially if you work in food service — an industry totally disrupted by the corona crisis.

So I've done my best to sift numerous reports and articles...

My friends, I would like to share some thoughts on our strategy in this new reality disrupted by the crisis. But first, let’s take a step back.A couple of weeks before the crisis started, our financial director, Kirill Vyrypaev, and I discussed the possibility of Dodo’s IPO in 2 years.

I have to explain here that our company has a lot of shareholders. About 200 of them are the investors who supported us during Dodo Pizza’s crowdinvesting campaign a few years ago. We didn't promise them dividends and quick returns. They invested their money in our company because...

Some people say this corona crisis is awesome. At last, you can officially work from home. You can improve your cooking, spend time with your kids, finish that online course in French literature... Don't trust people saying that. They are lying.This corona crisis sucks. People will die, lose their jobs, go bankrupt... And even if they don't, they can't go about their lives as usual.

So it sucks for anyone, but for everyone in the food service business, it sucks big time.

What can we do?

I reached out to my network of restaurateurs and QSR professionals asking...

As Dodo Pizza CEO, I've decided to lower my own salary to the lowest legally allowed figure. Why am I taking such a drastic measure?This past weekend our chain's sales in Russia—that's close to 90% of our business right now—have fallen by more than 30%. The quarantine enactment and the prohibition of restaurant work have taken their toll. Delivery revenue increase couldn't make up for the dent in our sales made by our closed restaurants. Obviously, our revenue will continue to decline in the near future.

Of course, we're not even thinking about giving up. We've already made...

Dodo Pizza in Hangzhou has been closed for almost one month due to the quarantine measures in China. On February 23rd we reopened for delivery and so-called non-contact takeaway. The team has been using this time to focus on strategic rather than operational tasks.We’ve been conceptualizing our menu, digging deep into analytics and financials, thinking through our promotional campaign for launching our second store and so on.

Growing Dodo Pizza in China is not only about establishing an efficient business model and finding the right product/market fit, it’s also about building a brand and forging a strong...