The Homeless Man Who Created Domino's with His Last $15

mr trump here you go up three media pizzas five dollars each i'll tell you what i'll counter that offer with an even better one here's the deal you give me those three pizzas only i'll give you just five dollars a piece sure okay still got it donald still got it the dominoes we know and love today has become a billion dollar empire but before it joined the ranks of mcdonald's and kfc it was an unwanted pizza store that changed when the founder went from being homeless to the genius behind delivering for free the unwanted child in 1937 tom was born on saint patrick's day in ann arbor when tom was just four years old his father passed away on christmas eve without their father tom's mother could no longer afford to raise her own kids she placed both tom and his brother jim into a foster home on the first day at his new home tom got into a fight he longed day after day for his mother to return nearly seven years later tom's mother had become a nurse and was able to provide for her two sons she moved the family back to traverse city where tom started school at tom's new catholic school he met father russell pasino he was aware of tom's family situation and gave tom odd jobs to do around the school and church for 35 cents an hour after the seventh grade tom moved schools he was still keen on working and decided to look for an opportunity by walking up and down the main street of his town he later found a job selling newspapers and a summer job picking cherries the work was hard and tedious he remembers thinking that the business would be more efficient if they made a machine to shake down the trees and catch the cherries in the tarp it was the first instance where he started thinking like an entrepreneur to make more money tom would go fishing and then sell his catches door to door while thinking of other ideas as his carefree and entrepreneurial spirit grew his relationship with his mother withered they constantly argued until his mother decided to put him and his brother back into foster care tom moved from one farm to another and ended up getting a job at a bowling alley he worked from 6 30 until midnight five days a week by high school tom moved again but this time into a ramshackle farm that had no electricity during the winter time frosts and light peered through the cracks of the walls life was difficult the clothes tom wore were worn out and filled with holes and his shoes were always covered in manure while walking to school he would keep his feet to the floor hoping no other students would notice one day he started to reflect on his path while shoveling a pile of manure that reached his ankles how did i get so off track it was then that he decided that he was going to fulfill his dream of becoming a priest so he applied to a seminary and was able to attend after his mother offered to pay with her savings tom felt right at home at the seminary and didn't get home sick like the other boys he was even somewhat mischievous he got into pillow fights and would talk in the study hall but he never did anything too serious in less than a year he kicked tom out of the seminary and told him he didn't have a vocation tom's dream of becoming a priest was crushed afterwards he was forced to move back into his mother's home they constantly argued as they did before until his mother gave up on him without telling him she sent a police officer to fetch him after school and send him to a juvenile delinquent home i felt like a criminal but had done nothing wrong embarrassed tom would walk a different route from school to home so that his classmates would never know fortunately when his aunt and uncle found out they petitioned the courts to have him live with them instead the first big mistake by then tom didn't care about graduating high school until he saw his aunt making preparations for his graduation not wanting to disappoint her he asked his teacher if there was anything he could do to graduate she gave in to his plays and allowed him to graduate last in his class in his yearbook he wrote the harder i try to be good the worse i get but i may do something sensational yet he attended ferris state college improved his marks and applied to the university of michigan after being accepted he couldn't afford the tuition so he left to join the marine corps thinking it was the army by the time he realized it was too late he could no longer attend college for another two years all he could do was make the best out of the situation if i could survive the marines i knew i could handle anything while training he decided to focus on improving himself mentally and physically he started reading inspirational books and would imagine himself building an empire robbed of college dream in 1959 tom was dispatched from the marines he had two thousand dollars in savings put aside for his college tuition but he lost every penny after meeting a slick businessman who convinced him to invest in a get rich quick scheme with only 15 dollars left in his pockets he hitchhiked from san diego to ann arbor he moved in with his younger brother jim and got a job as a supervisor for a local newspaper he scraped just enough money for his college tuition but dropped out after three weeks he had no money left for books and decided to try again in the next semester to make more money he started selling newspaper subscriptions he ended up getting many customers by offering to deliver the experience showed him the appeal in delivery and that when you see an opportunity it's important to seize it when the semester came around he was able to pay for his tuition and books but he dropped out again he was so busy working that he had no time to study at 23 years old he was a two-time dropout driving a beat-up car he felt like any dreams he had for the future was falling apart that's when his younger brother jim came to his rescue he heard that a small store was on the market for a cheap price it was called dominic's in ipsilanti near eastern michigan university he asked tom if he wanted to buy the store with him they could split shifts so that tom would have enough time to study tom only had 77 dollars in his bank account so he took out a 500 loan and bought the store with jim right after they signed the agreement jim got cold feet he was scared to leave the security of his job as a mailman six months later he gave into his fears after tom took his first night off jim realized that running the store was too much work and quit so tom had no choice but to take over instead of returning to college at first he was disappointed he decided that if he was going to be in the pizza business it would have to be the best in the country forced into homelessness tom was thinking big but his business was far from growing in fact the store was losing money every single week when he ran out of money he had no choice but to live off stale popcorn that he found in a cupboard for a week he couldn't afford to eat his own pizza unless it was burned eventually he became homeless too he couldn't pay for his rent and slept in the store his luck seemed to be getting worse with each passing day one evening half of his staff didn't show up so that's when he decided to limit the types of pizzas they made it turned out to be their most profitable night ever from then on he focused on keeping his menu simple and delivering for free he was the first pizza store to do this after the ipsilanti store became profitable he decided to open a second store in mount pleasant near central michigan university the night that he signed the agreement he laid in bed feeling scared to death why am i taking a risk on a second store when the first one is doing so well tom realized it too late to go back on his commitment not only was the agreement signed but he had also purchased the equipment fortunately it turned out to be a risk well worth taking that location along with the first became the busiest pizza stores in the country they sold thousands of pizzas each week most of its business came from students living on campus and customers wanting delivery challenging the industry standard after just a few years tom slowly built his empire much like he envisioned when he was training in the marines when he opened his third store the former owner called tom wasn't allowed to use their name anymore since their customers were getting confused so he settled on domino's after one of his drivers told him he was known as that guy from domino's this was the least of his problems the more pizza he delivered the more issues he'd encountered it was hard to keep a balance of the ingredients staying moist and the crust crispy so tom asked a manufacturer to develop a box made of corrugated paper with holes since it could strengthen insulation and retain heat longer they were reluctant to make it but tom kept pushing american technology is putting space satellites in orbit these days and you're telling me you can't punch a clean hole in a piece of cardboard tom's idea ended up being extremely cheap and mass producible it inspired him to come up with more ideas that became the industry standard including heated pouches conveyor ovens doe trays and commissaries a billion dollar empire in the late 60s tom attended a franchise seminar at boston college there he met ray kroc from mcdonald's and josh brown from kfc both men were responsible for turning what was once a small restaurant into a major franchise they inspired tom to continue to deliver as a focus on franchising nobody thought you could make money on delivery most places delivered just to get some volume before they could afford to cut out the service but i thought i could do it it was then that he set the ambitious goal of opening a new store a week by 1969 he nearly met that goal 32 domino stores open but almost all of them failed and tom found himself 1.5 million dollars in debt to avoid bankruptcy he relinquished control of the company to a bank they brought in a so-called expert who made things even worse by raising prices and cutting back on quality within a year the bank handed the company back to tom it was in the worst financial shape ever franchisees filed lawsuits and suppliers hadn't been paid in a long time i had well over a thousand creditors and got lawsuits from about 150 of them i was on the phone every day telling them all the same thing all i can do is pay for my food and rent so i can stay open and pay you one at a time tom slowly won them back and within a year he paid off his debt all of the lawsuits in his debt made him realize that he needed to change his business model anyone who wanted to franchise no longer had to pay an initial fee instead they had to manage a store for at least a year successfully tom's idea not only worked but proved to be extremely successful by 1983 there were over one thousand domino stores a three thousand percent increase the company grew even more after tom created a new policy if customers didn't receive their order within 30 minutes it was free only a year later tom opened over 5 000 stores and domino's became the largest pizza delivery company in the world he also managed to buy the detroit tigers today domino's is worth nine billion dollars and has stores in more than 85 countries this is the story of how an orphan with the worst luck turned a single pizza store into a billion dollar empire for more inspiring stories from today's most successful leaders don't forget to subscribe to our channel

Channel: Hook

Views: 5,541,197

Rating: 4.9126763 out of 5

Keywords: story of dominos, story of dominos pizza, dominos story, dominos, how dominos started, company man, company man dominos, the rise of dominos, dominos commercial, dominos donald trump, donald trump dominos, donald trump dominos commercial, dominos vintage commercial, dominos pizza inventor, dominos inventor, homeless man dominos, behind dominos, who man dominos, success story, success stories

Id: ooKSF4shDLc

Length: 12min 59sec (779 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 03 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/MarshallBrain]

More info: https://videdia.com/dominos-pizza/

[u/MellyMel86]

So this is why Domino’s tasted like cardboard