05 September 2018
11,425,645 rubles (around $167,000) was netted by Dodo Pizza Anapa in August (Anapa is a popular resort in Russia, on the northern coast of the Black Sea). 28 thousand pizzas were made there last month—around 900 a day on average. It’s an absolute record in our chain at the moment. Sergey Reuk and the team 💪🔥!
Read more03 September 2018
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!
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30 August 2018
When people get to know Dodo Pizza, one thing often boggles their minds: our commitment to the idea of radical transparency. Dodo’s dedication to openness manifests in many ways, and here are just a few examples:
29 August 2018
Looks like we kind of disrupted our market a bit.
A few months ago, we were totally f***ed up in Southaven. I wish I could say that we experienced an interesting management “problem” or faced a “challenge.” But in reality, we were simply screwed. Totally.
Southaven is a suburb of Memphis, Tennessee (and the location of our second American pizza shop). It’s one of the poorest American cities. Compared to Southaven, Oxford in Mississippi (where we opened our first American pizzeria) looks like heaven.
So I didn’t expect to find myself in such a bad situation: I couldn’t find enough members of the team to keep our pizza shop up and running. Even when by some miracle I managed to find somebody, they would leave after a few days. Just because they were offered 25 cents more an hour some other place.
Nobody cared about our mission, awesome product, or superb service. It was simply a question of money they could make an hour. And it’s worth mentioning that on average, we were paying as much as anybody else.
I would come to work knowing for sure that the general manager would come. Whether anybody else would show up was the big question.
Read more25 August 2018
Within the next few months, Dodo Pizza will come to Belarus. We’ll open eight pizzerias at once—seven in Minsk and one more in Brest. The first Dodo Pizza is scheduled to open in the capital on September 15. All these Dodo Pizzas will be launched at the locations that used to belong to Sbarro.
Vadim Tkachuk has become our first partner in Belarus. Vadim is a co-owner of the companies that managed Burger King and Sbarro in his country. A few months ago, he decided to change Sbarro over to Dodo Pizza. Within the next five years, Vadim’s company is planning to open at least 29 Dodo Pizza shops in Minsk, Brest, Vitebsk, Gomel, Grodno, and Mogilev. Also, we’re actively looking for new franchisees in other cities.
All of the Sbarro restaurants were located on busy streets downtown or in popular trade malls. Now they are all closed for reconstruction. They will be completely rebuilt. Everything will be changed: equipment, design, recipes. Now Vadim Tkachuk’s team and our managers are working together around the clock to get fully prepared for launching that many stores at the same time.
That’s what the Sbarro pizza shops looked like. Soon, they all will be replaced with Dodo pizzerias.
By the way, I’ll be in Minsk on September 29 while taking part in a forum called “Business of the Future.”
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