Pizza boss Don Meij says Domino’s beats other delivery services

Domino’s boss says challengers Uber Eats and Deliveroo are no match for his pizza chain’s branding, food and delivery.

The strength of the Domino’s brand is helping it combat players like Uber Eats, says boss Don Meij.

Domino’s Pizza chief executive Don Meij has declared popular food delivery services like Uber Eats and Deliveroo are no match for his pizza chain’s branding, food and delivery.

Mr Meij told investors on Thursday that there was plenty of growth ahead for Domino’s in Australia as well as key markets in Japan and Europe. He also discounted concerns the pizza maker was reaching saturation point in Australia, or was bumping up against its potential in regions like Germany or France.

Domino’s will update the market on its earnings trajectory at the company’s annual general meeting in three weeks.

But Thursday’s investor presentation was an opportunity to “debunk a number of myths”, Mr Meij said, pointing to areas including store roll outs, online growth and competition from food delivery aggregators as ones that needed the record set straight.

There was a perception in some quarters that Dominos was close to reaching maximum market penetration in Australia, re said.

But “we are so under-penetrated it is not funny,’’ Mr Meij told The Australian.

“There are nine countries that we now service,” he said, saying that together those countries had a population bigger than the US, and combined GDP bigger than China.

In that context “we are tiny”, he said.

“Even though we are market leaders in many of these countries we are under penetrated. We only cover about 25 per cent of Germany and we are the market leader. We only cover 35 per cent of France, and yet we are the market leader.”

Mr Meij said the growth potential was so huge that its Domino’s chain was the market leader in Japan but had not yet begun to venture into northern Japan and its large population centres.

“We don’t even have any stores in northern Japan where there are 16 million people,’’ Mr Meij said.

The same was true for its core Australian market, he said.

“We are only 3.6 per cent of fast food, which makes us still only the fourth or fifth most represented brand in Australia. The biggest competitor in Australia is six times bigger than we are.’’

At the investor presentation Mr Meij also spoke at length on the challenge from delivery aggregators and online delivery services like Uber Eats and Deliveroo. Some analysts have expressed concern the increasing popularity of these businesses would eat away at Domino’s sales and profits.

This threat came under the spotlight in the US overnight when Domino’s Pizza Inc chief executive Ritch Allison was forced to pull back on the US parent’s sales and same store sales growth targets because of what he termed “evolving, competitive environment” driven by delivery aggregators such as DoorDash, GrubHub, and UberEats partnering with chains like Chipotle and McDonald’s.

But Mr Meij said that in Australia, Domino’s was beating these delivery aggregators at their own game.

“What we highlighted at the half year is that our total online sales grew 18 per cent, and our total sales grew 12 per cent, showing that we are getting more online growth. If aggregators were hurting us we would have less online growth,’’ he said.

Mr Meij said the strength of the Domino’s brand was also helping it combat players like Uber Eats.

“What is really important to us is that when we deliver, it is our team member, it is a single brand with our uniform. It’s our paid team member, a trained service … and because it is so dedicated to Domino’s we can even deliver faster than the aggregator.’’

He said in the “new world” of online ordering Domino’s was the best and fastest at this. “The best pricing, the best service, execution and most branded,” he boasted.