How Domino's Became The World's Biggest Pizza Chain | Big Business | Insider

this used to be the only way to make a Domino's Pizza about a dozen workers touched every ball of dough rolling down the production line but now in Domino's brand new 50 million dollar facility in Indiana machines measure move and stack pizza dough and more and more workers touch buttons instead of flour you just have to kind of watch it make sure it's doing the right things all this comes after years of stiff competition from other pizza chains and a struggle to find enough workers even in the store Domino's in particular was having a hard time fulfilling these roles that are not super high paying and are pretty strenuous to work and a sales bike for pizza's biggest holiday those machines will be put to the test it's all hands on deck Super Bowl is one of the you know top three busiest days for Domino's Pizza so how does the world's biggest pizza chain balance automation with the human touch and what does all this mean for the future of fast food each year Domino slings out about a billion pizzas globally they have been one of the most successful public companies since around 2009-2010 the company can keep Pizza cheap because it controls its entire supply chain from dough making to delivery in the U.S it all depends on bustling production and distribution centers back in 2018 we filmed at an older Center in Connecticut with a more manual dough process there it took hours longer to make and chill pizza dough then at Domino's newest and heavily automated Indiana Center now we have robots so it's more efficient it's more consistent there's 110 000 square foot location opened in October 2022 and reportedly cost the company 15 million dollars we're constantly moving from the second that we start we're go go go while some centers still measure ingredients by hand at the new ones mixing machines pump and flour water oil salt and sugar directly from Storage then we have a secret recipe pre-packaged recipe I cannot tell you what's in our top secret ingredient because we wouldn't be able to let you go out of here the new facility can churn out 50 batches of dough a day that's 88 000 pizzas for our customers daily Joe has a shelf life to it and we don't we don't freeze it we constantly have to make it so it's it's Non-Stop workers in this new center mostly control the computers whole samples for quality control and troubleshoot any issues with the machines we don't like to stop so um basically if there's anything that goes on during the day we're meant to clean out the problems fast efficiently and get them going so the line never stops workers can program the machine to pop out different sized dough balls for small medium or large pizzas and I just changed that tube out to give us a little bit smaller go ball and then robots place the dough balls onto trays that's another update as this used to be done by hand nine years ago there was team members that were placing that so just imagine how hard that was on our team members this has made it a lot less physical and we're able to attract a lot more Talent a set of cameras make sure the dough balls don't stick together it's literally taking micro like pictures of it if it catches any mistakes with our placing this right here will reject its strain this machine applies a label to each tray to identify what kind of dough it was and when it was made behold the spiral Chiller about 3 000 feet of conveyor belts can cool 40 000 trays of dough at once there isn't a cooler bigger than the one that you see behind me we're able to hold two days worth of production and that gives us the ability to have dough in case of we need to support other supply chain centers they don't want to freeze it because then it would stop the dough from proofing or the rising that happens when yeast is activated so they chill it down to 38 degrees to slow the proofing process it's very cold in here our trays go up for 30 minutes and they come down for 30 minutes the dough used to take four hours to cool now with the spiral Chiller it takes just one the dough balls travel down another conveyor belt then sensors tell these robots to sack them 25 trays High a much faster process than the original way of doing it the machine also slides a dolly cart under each stack to easily move them this is the end of the line we double checked that each triggers a label then you push it here are six different kinds of dough handmade pan hand tossed extra large large medium small and wheat for school lunches await orders from franchises and they have to move fast to prepare for the biggest pizza holiday the Super Bowl we normally see a 30 percent increase so normally we go from producing half a million dough balls to 750 000 Lobos a week Noe says with all this automation the center was able to cut hours off its dough making time and this production process requires fewer employees an important feature of the new facility because less than a year into the pandemic dominoes came face to face with a labor crisis gripping the entire food industry by early 2021 the U.S restaurant industry was down 1.2 million workers and there were lots of reasons why some workers retired some quit some trained for jobs in other sectors and some relied on unemployment benefits employees left warehouse and delivery jobs at record rates dominoes in particular was having a hard time fulfilling these roles that are not super high paying pretty strenuous to Work Warehouse conditions can be tough in the summertime this dry dry Warehouse area it can get super hot we do have fans and we have other things to keep people cool and hydrated but it can get super hot that's where they keep the pizza sauce dipping cups barbecue sauce pizza boxes and the world's most controversial topping pineapple for all those pineapple Pizza Lovers the one area that we're looking into right here is our freezer which is below zero in temperature this freezer stores the cheese all the meat toppings and chicken wings the veggie freezer holds just that mushrooms onions and peppers and a cooler stores the pepperoni staffing has been a real challenge across again the whole industry so it's this kind of vicious cycle when you can't hire enough people it creates a lot of different problems throughout the business so here in Indiana Domino's implemented new processes to make warehouse and delivery jobs easier on employees bodies [Music] at older centers Goods would be bulk loaded onto trucks so when drivers got to franchises they had a mini grocery store and would Peck out ingredients from each shop but at the new centers Domino's has added a whole picking team they grab all the ingredients and load them into cages each store gets its own cage which is just efficient and faster and easier the wheels on these carts make it so smooth to go in and out so when the drivers pull up the pre-picked loads are waiting for them foreign this is where we do stage all of our products for loading workers move all the rolling cages and dough dollies onto 48-foot refrigerated trucks we come in and we place the cards in from left to right just into the truck we'll strap it every five rows or so to give it a support brace to hold everything in tight for heavily strapped in it goes a long way to get the pizza to you on average 13 stores worth of goods can fit in just one truck we do a lot of things that are kind of like Tetris here the center dispatches about 28 trailers they Supply over 300 stores across five states Domino's wanted the new center to take the load off older supply chain centers all those centers were over capacity most drivers are dispatched overnight to avoid traffic and crowded parking lots we're actually just left the center we're heading out to one of the franchisee stores gonna make their delivery uh my wife laughs at me every time because when I go to parallel park my car she's like why you put it up so much I'm like because I drive the truck more and I drive my car and I got a little bitty car too so you could just imagine how many white turns I'm doing in my little bitty car motor virus is it it got so bad Domino's launched a program to send employees from anywhere else in the company to Driving School we're arriving now there's storage right here on the left hand side [Applause] uh it has a store number the stop number so it's very easy to to know what store is getting wet so these are dope trains we take the old ones bring the new ones in so it's just a cycle the new picking and caging systems I've taken some of the physical stress off Truckers now everything's pre-picked so they've really made our job uh 100 easier and better and safer as well our on-time status is improved a lot as far as the delays we only had a smaller 15 minutes versus an hour so was all of Domino's investment in new tech worth it fast food correspondent Kate Taylor says yes it is working kind of all of these solutions they found are working pretty well and at this point the labor shortage is kind of abetting a little bit and Domino's has held on to its title of the biggest pizza chain in the world it's nearly doubled its Global store count in the last decade and past Pizza Hut in sales in 2018. Domino's was basically a list deal a bunch of Pizza Hut customers but what does all this automation mean for the future of human jobs in fast food automation is no longer an if it's a when for fast food here's definitely money to be made in using robots instead of humans and Domino's is not alone White Castle already uses robots on some fry stations and Jack in the Box is soon to follow robots are popping up in some KFCs and are set to start cooking chicken and McDonald's is testing AI to take drive-through orders Domino's itself has trialled self-driving cars to deliver pizza if there is a robot that can do something for a lower price point than hiring people to do it companies are going to jump on that which leads to the age-old concern could robots take people's jobs I personally don't think automating is an evil I think it's a bit more nuanced than that Kate says some of the lost jobs are actually okay to lose stacking boxes again and again and again it can lead to injuries automating jobs that are repetitive that are dangerous for workers that are even just straight boring that allows people to have the opportunity to have better jobs at a company and I think that that's also something that shouldn't be villainized what hasn't become robotic is Domino's in-store experience you can't automate everything making the pizza will stay human the company does have that hand tossed slogan to live up to Pizza chefs pulled a proof dough out of the fridge and still make every Pie by hand we're going to start with some fresh dough pull it out there stick it in the cornmeal you want to make sure you make a pencil room reduces the air and the dough Jessica ladles on a thin layer of tomato sauce next you move on to the cheesing phase [Music] you want to you want to make sure you stay away from The Middle at all even amounts he drops on about 40 slices of pepperoni for a large pizza it goes through the oven takes about six and a half minutes and then it'll come out on the other side a squeeze of garlic oil on the crust finishes off the pie and then you close the Box and it's all complete but just because there aren't any robots tossing Pizza doesn't mean there isn't a Hustle Ready Set Go [Music] nice job Jessica it's important to go fast I think um for the customer aspect because when they're placing an order um they're hungry you know every Pizza is a rush fastest pizza I've ever made is a large pepperoni in 25 seconds it's all hands on deck super bully is one of the you know top three busiest days for Domino's Pizza and before you ask 59 of customers are going to order pepperoni and stores like this one haven't been spared from the worst of the labor crunch there are challenges with staff tension there is the competition of you know all those other delivery businesses that want to take our drivers at the very end of the process the hot pies finally head out for delivery today still by humans and fleets of electric cars but maybe tomorrow in driverless ones we're going to keep trucking the product to to our customers and get it done [Music] next week it might change it's anything that has jalapenos uh plain Jade I like pepperoni sausage yes I will put triple pineapple on my pizza I love it I mean hey look I mean you could just tell I'm not lying

Channel: Business Insider

Views: 4,266,011

Keywords: Business Insider, Dominos, Pizza, SuperBowl, Technology, Innovation, Machines, Fast Food, Food Production

Id: yEnDZcX3xc8

Length: 15min 20sec (920 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 11 2023