How to reinvent franchising with tech and transparency

Every summer, we hold the Dodo Partners and Managers Meetup — the most important event of the year for our vast community of entrepreneurs united by the Dodo brand. This year, the gathering had to happen online. Still, more than 1,500 franchisees, investors, and team members watched it live on our YouTube channel. As always, the managing company reported on progress — and laid out its plans. Here are the meetup's 12 key unveilings. 

Buckle up! It's gonna be a bumpy ride. Dodo's team is launching an entirely new pizza concept in the UK, Europe's largest and most competitive pizza market. New product, new model, new style — new everything. I'm covering the project on LinkedIn in short updates — as soon as there are new developments. In this post, you can read the whole story from the beginning. 

If you want to know the real economics of the pizza business, you've clicked the right link. How much can a pizza shop, franchised or independent, make a year? How does pizza store revenue vary from country to country? What profit margin is attainable — and what impacts this number in the pizza business? We have the answers. 

“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...