Domino’s Pizza, Inc. (NYSE:DPZ) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Peter Saleh: Great. Thanks. Russell, I just wanted to come back to the conversation around the loyalty program and the changes that are happening in September. Can you elaborate a little bit? Are we moving from a transaction-based to a spend-based model? Or how is this going to be configured, I guess, come September? Just trying to understand if there’ll be — if you do change from transaction-based to spend-based, do you anticipate any sort of additional pressure on order counts? Or just trying to understand the structure here on the new loyalty program.

Russell Weiner: Yes, sure. Good morning, Peter. Yes, on the loyalty side, we are big fans in general. We look at — as I said in the opening remarks, we look at lifetime value. We look at long-term business decisions. And it’s clear that, in the long term, order count drives franchisee profitability. And so this will continue to be a transactions-based program. And so, yes, like I said, the big change on the transaction-based is actually we will allow people to transact at a lower level. And we think this is really important in bringing in incremental frequency into the program. Today, you need to get 60 points. In the future, you’ll be able to still get a pizza at 60 points, but at lower value with different products, you’ll be able to participate, and we think that will be a nice driver of order counts.

Ticket, in general, is something that, through our multiple platforms with Mix & Match, customers end up usually doing themselves. And obviously, we’ve got a robust AB testing system, and so there’s a lot of upselling — appropriate upselling on the website and on the apps.

Peter Saleh: Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. One moment for our next question. And our next question comes from the line of Sara Senatore from Bank of America. Your question, please.

Sara Senatore: Great. Thank you. FYI, I guess I have another two-part, one-part question. The first is I’m just trying to understand the sort of carryout opportunity. I guess I always thought the distinction between Domino’s and independence was perhaps a little bit more evident in delivery, just because of the speed of service and things like the tracker. So, from a carryout perspective, I guess, is it harder to make inroads because perhaps the advantages are less pronounced, or how are you thinking about that? And then, a separate question is just on pricing and the gap versus the industry, and it sort of seems to me that it keeps widening, the industry ahead of you. Is that going to translate into better traffic trends, or is there an opportunity to price? Thanks.

Russell Weiner: Yes, sure. So, I’ll give you a two-part answer. I’m sorry, Sandeep, made me do this 8:30 call this morning. Usually, we do 10:30, so I’ve had a couple of cups of coffee. So, my apologies. On carryout, the interesting thing that drives the carryout business, and it kind of makes sense when you think about it, is just proximity. And so, the great piece of our fortressing strategy is that we’re opening up stores closer to customers. So just like our delivery drivers make more efficient deliveries when they’re closer to customers, the same thing is if we put a Domino’s Pizza — you mentioned, for example, competitors being local pizza companies. If we put a Domino’s Pizza right in the middle, that’s a great thing that those are really, really incremental transactions from us.

In fact, the incrementality of carryout when we split the store is even more incremental than delivery from a customer standpoint. So, the second piece is carryout customers, they really want value. And one of the reasons they’re doing carryout is they want to avoid the tip, they want to avoid the delivery fee and nobody provides better value than Domino’s Pizza. Part of the scale that we’re able to get through our purchasing is then passed along to customers, and I think we’re very competitive from a carryout standpoint. And then, with pricing, to me, the pricing at Domino’s has always been volume-based. We certainly want to have — on an order-by-order basis, we want to make sure our franchisees are making the profit they need to, and Sandeep talked to the increase in franchisee profitability.

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