All changes notwithstanding, it was still just ’customization.’ We were still a pizza QSR - in our pizza shop we sold pizzas in boxes, expected a large share of to-go orders, and had a single-product menu comprising 80% pizza products. Despite these adaptations, we never gave up our core concept. The WeChat app would increase efficiency even further, as there’d be no need for cashiers. We created a new ‘pizza shop of the future’ concept - a small store located in an area with high footfall, boasting a small and efficient kitchen, and offering a new type of ‘Roman’ dough that would allow us to bake pizzas quicker and save space in the shop. In 2018, in light of our insights, we decided to relaunch our concept in China. That was the beginning of Dodo Pizza China’s second developmental stage. And we realized that to be visible and to be able to build our brand we needed to open shops in locations with high footfall. In China, the whole delivery market is controlled by aggregators. But the statistics and experience we’d accumulated let us assess our model’s potential. It’s a mass market that we’re working in - you have to launch a large chain to get results. Of course, one or two pizza shops without a strong brand don’t prove anything. On the ground, our traditional model worked poorly in China. So in 2016, we launched our first Chinese pizza shops which were essentially the same as our Russian outlets. Entrepreneurs from China contacted us, ready to launch franchised pizza shops in Yantai, Shandong, and Hangzhou, Zhejiang. In 2015, we came to China with the original Dodo Pizza business model: franchising. There were two ’seasons‘ in our China series. As a result, this called for a lot of changes in the business model as well as in the product itself. And besides, in the UK, as in Russia and many other countries, pizza is a top-of-mind product, especially when it comes to delivery. There, we’re still a pizza delivery service. We’ve extensively ‘customized‘ our business model, yes, but its core hasn’t changed. But in Britain, we didn’t need to alter our model so drastically. What about Dodo Pizza in the UK? you might ask - after all, we launched a new concept there as well. But, unlike Drinkit and Doner 42, we would have to develop its core not in our home market where we understand our customers and have resources and other advantages - but in China, a completely foreign business and cultural environment. Dodo Pizza China would then effectively become a separate concept, related to the rest of Dodo only by virtue of its name and, to a lesser extent, by our Dodo IS digital platform.Įssentially, that would make it the fourth Dodo Brands concept. Now, looking from a bird’s-eye view, it has become clear that even if this original Chinese concept succeeds, in the end, we’ll have an entirely different Dodo Pizza.Įffectively, we would have to develop two different Dodo Pizza models - one for China, and another for the rest of the world. We expanded our menu, introduced products that were completely new to us, and revamped our service and production model. This didn’t work out, so we began to improve our model. Initially, our new pizza shop concept in Hangzhou was similar to the model we were developing in other countries (QSR pizza delivery). And we need a strong synergy between all our projects around the world. That’s not enough to achieve stability in China’s highly competitive market. In fact, Dodo Pizza China has already transformed into an independent startup, and the only elements connecting it to our global business concept are its team and our culture. What does this approach give us? We’ve realized that in China we’ve deviated too much from Dodo Pizza’s global business model. Dodo’s history is full of experiments, and now it’s time to take it all in from a bird’s-eye view and think about what a global future looks like for both our product and the company itself. We’ve been pondering our company’s long-term strategy a lot lately.
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