Welcome to Edition #105 of Gorick's newsletter, where Harvard career advisor and Wall Street Journal bestselling author Gorick Ng shares what they don't teach you in school about how to succeed in your career.
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→ Read time: 5 min
STORY
How Domino’s Pizza went from bankruptcy to billions
You've probably heard of Domino's Pizza, the largest pizza chain in the world that delivers one in every three pizzas in the United States.
But did you know that in 2007, Domino’s was on the verge of collapse?
Financially, the company was buried under $1.7 billion in debt. Socially, it was known for having “the worst excuse for pizza.” Sales were plummeting and the future looked bleak.
Then, the Domino’s team looked around—and noticed something interesting: E-commerce was taking off. People were increasingly buying things like games and jewelry online and getting them delivered to their homes. Meanwhile, Domino’s had a delivery system already, but people had to place their order by phone.
So, the team wondered, “What if people could also order pizza online?”
So, that same year, Domino’s launched its online ordering system. “Ordering pizza on the Internet is a relatively new trend,” the company stated. “[But] we’re evolving…to cater to our young, hip customers who live on the Internet.”
But Domino’s wasn’t done.
Following in the footsteps of other e-commerce brands, Domino’s released a mobile app and a “Pizza Tracker” that let their customers see where their pizza was in its delivery process, not unlike the tracking systems of UPS and FedEx.
It also created a custom point-of-sale system to manage orders and inventory (thanks to Panda Express’ Peggy Cherng) and developed a “robust” internal IT team for continuous digital improvement.
The result?
In 2009, 2 years after unveiling its online order system, Domino’s announced it’d been ranked as the number one pizza chain in online order sales. The company overtook rivals like Pizza Hut and even unrelated chains like Starbucks to rank #1 in customer satisfaction.
Today, nearly 2 decades later, the company’s stock price is up 5,000% since 2008. Domino’s latest digital move? A partnership with DoorDash.
What does this mean for you?
The next time you’re struggling to figure out what to do next on a project, remember Domino’s Pizza—and look left, look right… and observe what others are doing for inspiration.
UNSPOKEN RULE
Observe what others are doing
Domino’s taught me the importance of paying attention to what others are doing (similar to what Joe of Trader Joe’s did). You may not care that people are selling jewelry online… until it becomes the trend that leads to a big “aha” moment for your business and career.
How can you pull a Domino’s Pizza right now?
1. Think of a problem that’s wasting time, causing stress, or leading to frustration for you or a higher-up at work
- E.g., “Our CEO keeps wanting to redesign our website, but I’m not a web designer and don’t know where to even begin.”
2. Look for the closest “exemplar” using Google, ChatGPT, Perplexity, or other AI
- E.g., “Here are 10 examples of websites I like… and here’s what I’d add vs. remove vs. change to make it fit our needs.”
3. Pitch your idea!
- E.g., “Jim: I know you’ve been wanting to redesign our website. I found 10 websites we could emulate and then screenshotted the elements I liked from each to create this Frankenstein mockup. What do you think? If you like the general direction, I can start looking for designers and come back to you with a proposal.”
Not every example will directly translate to whatever you’re working on—and not every example you transplant will work—but one will… and it might just be the one that gets you seen, heard, and remembered.
Observe what others are doing!
See you on Thursday for our “Ask Gorick Anything” of the week,
Gorick
What’s an “unspoken rule”? They’re the things that separate those who get ahead from those who stumble—and don’t know why. You can learn more about these rules in the workplace in my Wall Street Journal bestselling book called—you guessed it—The Unspoken Rules.
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Sources:
- the largest pizza chain in the world that delivers one in every three pizzas in the United States
- $1.7 billion in debt
- “the worst excuse for pizza [ever].”
- “Ordering pizza on the Internet is a relatively new trend,”
- A press release from Domino’s Pizza on July 31, 2007.
- “robust”
- “In the past 24 months,” the company noted, “Domino’s jumped from an 11 percent share to a 28 percent share.”
- the company’s stock price is up 5,000% since 2008
- A partnership with DoorDash
