How to reinvent franchising with tech and transparency

When somebody mentions gemba, it always makes me think of veggie smoothies. You know you should drink them because they are super healthy. But you never do.

Too much trouble and not as tasty as a greasy bun with some fried beef and cheese from the fancy burger joint around the corner.

Have no doubt: gemba is as healthy for your company as the smoothies are for your body. Yet while millions tout the benefits of the gemba process and continuous improvement and hammer home again and again how good it...

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So stupid of us: Americans love picking toppings and making their own pizzas, and we didn’t allow them to do that.

Why?

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OK, we’ve got a problem: the business is growing. It sure brings excitement to our CEO, but it also brings tons of trouble to our IT team, which has to keep up with the pace.

All our pizzerias are run by our own IT system. It’s responsible for every step of our pizza making.

By the end of 2016, we at Dodo Pizza had 154 pizza shops in 9 countries. Now it’s 247. The guys from the franchise department brag that by the end of the year it could be 300 easily.

The growth itself takes its toll on our infrastructure, which needs bolstering. The expansion also increases the demand for new features: the more people join our pizza chain, the...

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We're missing something. That's what our team has been thinking while working on this blog lately. And rightly so, because actually, we've been missing a lot. Dodo Story was created as a management blog for a global audience of entrepreneurs and leaders. From day one, the blog covered the story of our American branch from the management point of view, which was quite a ballsy attempt to barge into a crowded pizza market in a small college city in the States (Oxford, Mississippi, to be precise). We had our moments on this blog...

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