Reimagining Domino's

Understanding the Brand

Domino’s Pizza, one of JFL’s leading franchises in India, has always stood for  more than just food in India, and was credited with several industry-leading innovations they brought to the market . Since its first dine-in outlet in 1996, the brand established itself as a highly recognisable and trusted F&B brand among Indian households. The promise of 30-minute delivery or an instant refund caught the consumer imagination like no other. But at an age where user experiences in all spheres of food retail reached new highs, the average Domino's customer had begun to demand more than just sheer nostalgia in a slice.

In our project for Jubilant FoodWorks, through in-depth conversations and workshops with business leaders across a range of departments, we tried to understand the challenges the organisation was facing. Across the organisation’s key service delivery systems of Phone, Dine-In, and Digital, we attempted to map the customer journey to uncover what were the new standards of experience the brand had to live up to.  During our research key questions came up: What does the new and evolved diner need? In an age of speed enabled by digital experiences, how much time must be spent in an order?

We looked at the holistic picture, spanning all parts of the Domino’s operations. Long waiting times, lack of menu recommendations, illegible or unintuitive names for pizzas, an outdated dine-in experience, broken customer journey across different service channels  – these were some of the gaps in the process that we discovered during research.  Taking into consideration that Domino’s Pizza in India is the fastest-growing Domino’s in the world, we looked not to detach from its history, but rather build within an already established legacy.

Armed with insights from field immersions - which involved passive listening of phone orders, mystery shopping at dine-in outlets, and benchmarking the digital experience against the industry-leading applications and services at the time we created a new and evolved Domino’s experience worthy of all its members.

A Commitment to Reinvention

Quicksand was first approached by Domino’s senior leadership to develop a design thinking module for their accelerated leadership program. The program was targeted at a cross-functional team of promising business leaders within the organisation, with the goal of equipping these leaders with tools and the inspiration to take charge of Domino's future. One of the key components of the program was embedding innovation within the organisation.

The company measures its performance around an important sales indicator called  Same Store Growth (SSG). While Domino’s had been increasing their revenue by opening new stores, sustainable growth depended on the performance of existing stores. If SSG isn’t growing, it signalled a deeper problem with consumer experience and hence customer loyalty.

Recognising it’s stagnating SSG numbers, the leadership had made a significant commitment to bringing customer centricity and innovation back to being the core of Domino's and finding ways to foster organisational transformation to reinvent the business. To address this, Domino’s leadership focused on three pillars:

Design Thinking: The idea was to infuse a culture of innovation across the hierarchy, connecting people more closely with consumers to uncover unmet needs and integrate those insights into the core business processes.

Data Analytics: Domino’s recognised the vast amount of customer data they were sitting on and decided to build a robust analytics engine to better target promotions, recognise loyal customers, and refine their strategy.

Ventures: Acknowledging the dynamic evolution of the food tech scene, they saw the need to incubate and invest in other food tech companies that could either be acquired or integrated into Domino’s operations.

A Food-focused Design Sprint

To kick off our engagement with Domino’s, Quicksand decided to run an immersive workshop exploring the vibrant food culture of New Delhi. Quicksand led around 30 of Domino’s top-performing business leaders to immerse themselves in real-world consumer experiences through a design thinking workshop in Nehru Place, a bustling hub of commerce and food in Delhi. The design sprint aimed to help the business leaders translate insights gathered during the immersion into actionable innovations for the company.

Nehru Place was a deliberate choice, encapsulating a microcosm of the city’s culinary landscape—from high-end dining options and high-street food chains to popular street vendors selling some of the staples of the Delhi street food scene. The area attracts a diverse range of consumers; from corporate professionals grabbing a quick lunch to college students enjoying affordable street food. This diversity provided participants with a comprehensive view of various consumer behaviours and preferences.

Participants were divided into smaller groups, each focusing on a specific segment of Nehru Place’s food ecosystem. They analysed behaviours, such as how customers made dining decisions, interacted with food outlets, and what factors influenced their satisfaction. Some groups observed how establishments catered to large crowds quickly without compromising quality, while others examined the roles of price, convenience, and authenticity in fostering customer loyalty, as well as the challenges faced by smaller vendors in maintaining consistent quality and hygiene.

After field observations, the groups reconvened to share insights and reflect on their learnings. Workshop facilitators guided them through exercises designed to connect consumer insights with potential innovations for Domino’s.

One group noted how the informal dining experience—where customers stand around high tables enjoying comfort food—could inspire Domino’s to rethink its dine-in strategy, exploring more casual, quick-service outlets suited to a fast-paced urban lifestyle. Another group, inspired by efficient small eateries, suggested streamlining Domino’s service processes to reduce wait times and enhance customer satisfaction. .

The workshop emphasised the importance of viewing the consumer experience as a journey, with customer-facing elements and back-end processes playing crucial roles. Participants were encouraged to think beyond just pizza and consider the entire experience, from order placement to meal completion.

By the end of the two-day immersion, the teams had generated a portfolio of innovative ideas for Domino’s business strategy. These ideas were not merely quick wins but involved fundamental changes in how Domino’s engaged with customers and delivered services. The insights gained from this immersive experience laid the groundwork for strategic initiatives to help Domino’s reclaim its position as a leader in the competitive food industry.

From Idea to Implementation

The success of the workshop prompted the client to invite us back for a more focused design exercise with the group, aiming to refine the high-level ideas generated in the workshop  and guide them toward implementation.

They provided a brief, centered on improving the journey from order placement to NPS  (Net Promoter Score), a common metric for gauging customer satisfaction that involves surveying customers to rate their experience on a scale of 0 to 10 after a transaction, such as checking out of a restaurant. Our task was to identify areas where the brand was detracting from or enhancing the ideal customer experience during this journey and pinpoint opportunities for innovation.

This workshop served as a springboard for a six-month design engagement focused on three core service delivery channels at Domino's: mobile app, phone-based delivery, and dine-in experiences. We collaborated with selected members of the accelerated leadership group, forming micro-teams assigned to each of these streams.

Throughout the process, we guided the teams in consumer immersion principles, ethnographic research, and translating insights into actionable opportunities and potential prototypes. For instance, we analysed customer calls to assess how well the experience aligned with the brand’s “food first” values. One surprising finding was that out of a typical 10-minute call, about eight minutes were spent confirming the customer's address before placing the order. This insight revealed that Domino’s was operating more like a delivery company than a food company.

By analysing and presenting these findings to the leadership, we helped them recognise areas where the customer experience was being compromised and how to reclaim that space. Over six months, this work culminated in a series of concrete ideas that Domino’s later implemented.

Learnings

Our role extended beyond that of design consultants; we became partners in Domino's innovation journey. We collaborated closely with their internal teams, fostering a mindset of continuous improvement through hands-on experience. This was about building a sustainable practice of innovation that the organisation could carry forward independently.

A significant outcome was the creation of a dedicated digital design team at Domino's to lead the brand’s renewed focus on digital experiences. Before this project, the internal IT team managed the website and delivery assets, but a digital-centric approach required a specialised digital design head and product managers, that could match and out-compete the user experience that the likes  of Swiggy and Zomato had brought to the industry.

These changes were enabled by leadership's commitment to the design thinking process, transforming a smaller engagement into a more impactful one. Many proposed solutions required deep structural changes, demanding substantial commitments. This went beyond app redesigns; it involved building an internal team that could continuously evolve the application. For the dine-in experience, it wasn’t just about remodelling outlets but rethinking outlet typology and location strategy, signalling fundamental shifts in the brand's operations.

The practice of innovation must be learned by doing, and that’s the journey we took with Domino's. Whether in incubators as mentors or as design consultants, our real value lies in providing deeper business insights that can ground design interventions. In this particular case, our team worked alongside internal stakeholders, who understood the business but were learning innovation firsthand.

This mentorship and learning by doing are invaluable; concepts of an approach that deviates significantly from business-as-usual, can only be grasped through experience. Our goal is to coach internal teams to foster continuous improvement, run lighter experiments, secure buy-in, and demonstrate quick wins to attract funding. This approach shows that innovation doesn’t always require heavy investments; it’s about fostering the right mindset within the team.

In summary, the project’s success was a result of the right leadership mindset, a committed team, and an agile, innovative approach.