Domino’s is a pizza company with a global network of more than 14,000 stores. The franchise-based business emphasizes quality and customer service, implementing initiatives like the “30 minutes or free” guarantee (which has been discontinued in many markets) and actively seeking feedback from customers to continuously improve its offerings. Domino’s also places an emphasis on technology innovation, with more than half of its sales generated through digital channels.
Domino’s has a strong competitive advantage in its delivery capabilities, which help to drive growth even during periods of labor shortages as experienced this year. The chain operates a fleet of more than 100,000 drivers, who use proprietary software to track orders and deliver pizzas to consumers across the country and around the world. The company’s logistics platform allows Domino’s to manage deliveries and optimize routes in real-time, while tracking the status of each order from kitchen to door.
The word domino has various origins, and this is true of the game itself. Both words appear to have first appeared in France shortly after 1750. The term may derive from an earlier sense of the name of a garment worn with a mask in carnival season or at a masquerade ball. It could also have referred to a black mask that contrasted with the priest’s white surplice in a religious ceremony.
Each domino is a flat rectangular block with a molded surface of small round or square indentations called pips. The pips vary in number from six to zero, with the most common being double-six. Each end of a domino is marked with a value, either in terms of pips or by color. A domino is normally twice as long as it is wide, which facilitates its stacking and re-stacking after play.
A domino is said to be “in a suit” if the number of its pips matches the suit of another domino, or if it is in the 0 suit. There are also variants of the game that include matching a domino by its color, or by its denomination (e.g., in the case of a double-six set, by its rank).
Domino’s is able to leverage its delivery network to generate significant revenue, despite challenges from third-party delivery services. While these companies have a short-term competitive advantage, Domino’s has a larger scale and is able to leverage its customized operating system to keep transaction costs low and to gain valuable insights about its customers.
The most popular type of domino play is layout games, which are played with a set of dominoes laid out on a table or other surface. Most layout games fall into two broad categories, blocking games and scoring games. The simplest domino sets have 28 tiles, and most games are played with this number of tiles. However, larger sets exist that allow for greater numbers of ends, increasing the potential combinations of tiles and players. Some of the most popular extended sets are double-nine (55 tiles) and double-12 (91).