By Ben Coley
Domino’s has joined the list of companies laying off corporate employees.
The pizza giant announced during its Q1 earnings call that it eliminated roles below its executive level to create a “faster, more efficient structure” that matches its Hungry for MORE strategy. The plan revolves around food innovation, operational improvements, value and franchisee profitability.
“Moving forward, we believe this new structure will allow us to be quicker to market, and we will continue to prioritize investments that have the greatest impact on our customers, franchisees and the brand,” CEO Russell Weiner said during the chain’s Q1 earnings call.
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Domino’s expects some savings from the layoffs, but it’s planning to reinvest most of it back into the business. The brand declined to point out how much it would save specifically. CFO Sandeep Reddy said it’s all incorporated in the expected 8 percent growth in operating profit for 2025.
“It’s really consumer technology, store technology, capacity investments,” Reddy said. “And we continue to focus on making sure that we’re making investments in those areas to drive the business in the future.”
The move comes as Domino’s same-store sales declined 0.5% in Q1, slightly below the chain’s expectations. The brand benefited from 1.8 percent pricing, including high single digits in California. This more than offset negative traffic and a slight decline in product mix due to a higher carryout business that brings a lower average check compared to delivery. Carryout comps lifted 1% while the delivery channel—impacted by pressured lower-income consumers—saw same-store sales fall 1.5 percent.
Weiner insisted the sluggish sales are because of issues faced by the entire QSR segment—and not related specifically to what Domino’s is doing. He added that while comps didn’t grow, Domino’s still grew market share and is in better shape to compete when the economy opens up.
“Because we are the No. 1 pizza player, we’re still slightly short of one in every four pizzas sold in the U.S. as Domino’s Pizza. If you think of other categories—burgers and Mexican and coffee—other No. 1 brands are significantly higher,” Weiner said. “And so, this is not a short-term thing that’s going on here. There’s significant share growth to continue to happen in the category that’s going to continue to grow, we believe, like it has that 1% to 2% over time.
“The interesting dynamic within pizza is about 40%-plus of the competition are locals and regionals, which don’t have anywhere near the capabilities to lean into value long term like we do,” he continued. “And so, when we look forward, we see lots of run room for growth on this U.S. business.”
One of Domino’s fastest-growing levers is the third-party delivery business. Earlier this year, Domino’s announced that it partnered with DoorDash, alongside its current agreement with Uber Eats. The chain began piloting in a few stores and expects to start its nationwide launch in May and finish by the end of Q2. Domino’s believes DoorDash will bring in twice as much business as Uber and that it will be 50% incremental. Additionally, DoorDash helps Domino’s reach more suburban and rural guests whereas Uber helps more on the urban side.
Weiner noted that Domino’s isn’t concerned with how the DoorDash business impacts Uber.
“All of this is encompassed in our overall delivery business, and we want to be where customers are,” the CEO said. “ … Now that we’re going to be on both of these big platforms, I don’t think the decision to go on a DoorDash or an Uber is going to be based on Domino’s. It’s going to be based, really, on [customers’] loyalty to that platform. Again, we’re going to try to do everything we can to bring them back to Domino’s. But if they want to buy us on DoorDash, that’s because of their natural behavior on that platform. And I don’t really think there’s anything we can do here, which is why we’re OK. That’s why we’ve priced the way we have, and that’s why, really, our strategy for aggregators has been to meet customers where they are, whichever app they’re on.”
Domino’s is also benefiting from menu innovation, particularly the Parmesan Stuffed Crust, which Weiner called “arguably the biggest new menu item in our history.” It was released in early March, so it didn’t have a meaningful impact in Q1. However, the CEO said the brand “couldn’t be happier” with how it’s performed thus far. Customer satisfaction scores have been favorable, and the chain has seen a high mix of orders come with a stuffed crust pizza.
Weiner views stuffed crust as a big opportunity as it mixes about 15% for its competitors.
“Although it’s still early, performance has been tracking to our expectations,” the CEO said. “We’re excited about the impact this product will have not only this year, but as a market share driver for years to come.”
Another key lever for Domino’s is value. In Q1, the pizza giant launched its “Best Deal Ever” promotion—any crust, any topping for $9.99—from February 10 to March 2.
A week ago, the brand brought back its Boost Week promotion in which all menu-priced pizzas ordered online are 50% off. Reddy said the discount does “a great job in terms of being a customer acquisition.”
“And the one thing I want to add on this, with the economics that we have, if the competition tries to keep up with us in terms of promotional intensity, there’s going to be pain in those P&Ls for their franchisees,” Reddy says. “And it’s just going to be really working more and more into our favor if that intensity is very high, and over time.…We’ve opened up, over the last 10 years, 1,900 stores. The big national players have closed just slightly less than those. And I think that really just shows what happens when you try to promote very intensively when you don’t have the economics to be able to promote.”
Domino’s finished the first quarter with 7,031 U.S. restaurants after opening a net of 17 locations. The brand also had 14,327 international units.
The brand expects to grow domestic comps by 3% in 2025, although Reddy cautioned that “in the event that macro pressures persist, it could put pressure on achieving this number.”
“Really, the first quarter came in pretty much at our expectations, maybe a little bit off, but we knew the macro was going to be tough, and we expect the macro to be tough this year,” Reddy says. “But what we’re actually saying is, if there’s a further deceleration of the macro environment that could put pressure on the business, and I think that’s really what we are pointing out over here, but other than that, I think the starting point is, it’s a tough macro and that’s how we built our budget.”
Ben Coley is editor of QSR magazine, PMQ Pizza’s sister publication. This article originally appeared on QSR.com.
