An Original Recipe Change Saved This Popular Pizza Chain

Pizza chains spend considerable effort trying to differentiate themselves from competitors, which is why most people have their own specific go-to fast-food pizza joint. Papa John's follows a strategy of amplifying its use of fresh, all-natural ingredients. While there are reasons to avoid Pizza Hut, the chain is known for its stuffed crust. And Domino's, for most people, is known for its speedy delivery. Want a pie quickly? Order Domino's. However, the delivery-focused chain was never really known for serving up the best pizza. In fact, for years, Domino's pizza was considered objectively bad, with phrases like "cardboard" and "bland" used to describe elements of the Domino's pie. Unsurprisingly, the chain wasn't doing too well around 2009, and flagging revenue and poor customer feedback made the company embark on a complete brand and recipe overhaul from the ground up.

What followed was one of the restaurant industry's most dramatic turnarounds, not just in terms of menu offerings, but also in how well the changes were received. Domino's first location opened in 1960, and in the leadup to its 50th anniversary in 2010, the restaurant basically went back to the drawing board and redesigned its pizza. In a press release in late 2009, the company outlined how it had put multiple pizza sauces, cheeses, and crust seasonings through countless trials to come up with its new and improved pizza. What's more, Domino's even owned up, through a daring marketing campaign, to having offered underwhelming pizza that let customers down. It asked for another chance, and the public responded positively.

Since Domino's had adopted a strategy of complete, almost brutal, transparency, its 2009 press release described exactly what changes the company had made to the pizza's main elements. The new crust was seasoned with garlic and parsley, and the updated cheese was now 100% mozzarella flavored with a hint of provolone for additional sharpness and complexity. Finally, the sauce was made richer, sweeter, and with punchier notes of herb and red pepper.

These changes were finalized after thousands of trials and tested against competitors like Pizza Hut and Papa John's. The company was so confident about the new pizza that it even put out a special promotion offering to either fix or refund the order of any customer who wasn't completely satisfied. One Redditor in the r/Dominos subreddit who said they worked at Domino's during the years when the company was changing its pizza recipe compared the old sauce to "tomato water." The same employee then mentioned being pleasantly surprised by how good the new sauce, cheese, and crust iterations tasted.

While Domino's had so far relied on its speedy delivery to set itself apart, it now wagered that it could set itself apart for that as well as serving pizza that tasted better than the competition (which, per our fast food pizza ranking, it partially succeeded in doing). In addition to the recipe overhaul, the company also focused on streamlining its logistics and ordering platforms.

In addition to the pizza recipe, Domino's also planned and implemented several other changes within the same few years. The menu was embellished with new offerings, including baked sandwiches and pastas, specialty pizzas, and the still-popular chocolate lava cake.

The changes undertaken were so complex and changed things so fundamentally that every aspect of the company was affected. New menu items, new ingredients, and new processes meant new shelf lives and new methods of preparing pizza. Supply chains were modified, as were the company's ordering systems, in order to give customers more options and a better ordering experience.

Finally, there's the marketing campaign. Domino's strategy was to unabashedly own up to its faults. This involved publicizing reactions of disappointed past consumers and descriptions likening Domino's pizza to cardboard. Per some analysts, the marketing strategy was as crucial as the recipe overhaul, if not more so, to the turnaround of the company's fortunes. The marketing campaign was daring, and Domino's CEO at the time, Patrick Doyle, was quoted by Time as saying, "I'd be lying if I told you I didn't have a knot in my stomach the day that advertising launched."

Ultimately, the strategy worked, and Domino's continues to be a go-to for "good-enough" pizza and speedy delivery. Sure, it's unlikely to be anybody's favorite pizza (though we did figure out the best Domino's pizza to order). However, it is no longer described with the dismal phrases that were used before the 2010 overhaul, and the company's over 20,000 locations around the world are proof of how successful its turnaround strategy was.