Khushiyon Ki Home Delivery - Gargi Sarkar(FT13126)

Domino’s is one of the most well recognized pizza brands in India. Set up in 1996, Domino’s now operates over 450 stores and serves for dine-in, take-away and delivery. Along with pizzas, the menu includes various side orders and beverages.

For my marketing project, I chose to focus on one of the Domino’s stores located in Porur, Chennai and study the operations of the store from various aspects of marketing. Just like other stores, this one operated on the master franchise model – Owned by the franchisee, operated by the franchiser. This ensures that the franchisee has good experience and knowledge of the local market. Domino’s, on the other hand, ensure that the staff is provided relevant training. Regular audits are done to ensure that quality benchmark is met.

Domino’s positions itself as a ‘Pizza Delivery Company’. Thus, each store puts in extra effort that the delivery guidelines are met. The store at Porur is strategically located with a delivery radius of about 3 kms. This covers service to residential (Mugalivakkam, Porur) as well as commercial (Arcot Road) area. The presence of major business hubs and companies nearby (DLF IT SEZ, HP, L&T, etc) also ensures that good number of working population is covered. The store operates on all days of the week from 11:00 AM to 11:00 PM.

My second visit to Domino’s was as a customer. I wanted to observe the observations from the point of view of a customer. I went with two of my friends on a Sunday evening, when most people are expected to eat out. I reached the store at around 7:00 PM and was greeted by a young representative. We were seated at a small table with three chairs. The store had five other such tables, thus supporting a maximum of 18 dinning-in customers. A glance at the setup gives a sense that the main focus of the store is delivery rather than dine-in.

The staff at Dominos Porur includes two desk representatives, three working at the kitchen and five employees engaged in delivery. This store and most of the other Domino’s stores follow a self-service pattern. This ensures that employees are not much involved in service within store and can be utilized for delivery.

The menu offers a variety of veg and non-veg pizza options along with options available for base, crust and toppings. Apart from pizza, the store offers various side orders and beverage. We ordered for some pizza, bread and beverage. At the time of ordering, the store had five more customers waiting. All the staff in the store was visibly busy with order for dine-in as well as delivery. Our order took about 40 minutes to arrive. Domino’s offers a 30-minute delivery promise – if delivery is made after half an hour of placing the order, customer has the right to demand it free of cost. However, such a promise is not in place for dine-in! After talking to a few of the fellow customers, I got to know that the average dine-in delivery time was 40 minutes. However, service is faster during the weekdays and forenoon when the amount of delivery orders is less.

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