I’ve told the story before of how Domino’s prepared me for my own business. Let me provide a little more detail.
Background
When I joined the company in 1987, Domino’s Pizza was opening a thousand stores a year. The company was growing insanely. I saw a survey that claimed that their mascot, the Noid, was the second-most recognized figure in pop culture—right below Santa Clause. They were exploding. With this growth came a giant push from the company to train managers for all those stores. We didn’t have assistant managers or shift managers. We had MITs (managers-in-training). If you didn’t promote, they pushed you out of the training program.
Each manager-in-training received a workbook that schedule training over several months. MITs had a heavy work schedule to train through immersion (and earn pay). Each region had a regimen of in-person training courses. MITs also had regular job performance reviews. These components were part of a goal of teaching an employee how to run a $500,000/year business within six months of their hire.
I learned more in those few months in a corporate environment than I did in almost two decades at franchisees. Managers I met years later couldn’t tell me what was in the dough, much less do the advanced math. Not that they were necessarily bad managers—they just weren’t trained to become business owners.
For example, Domino’s divided their fiscal year into 13 4-week periods. This gave us several advantages—one of which was that when we compared sales to last year (which we did daily, weekly, and periodically), we were comparing the same day of the week for a more accurate comparison. Our paperwork each period included
1st week—a profit projection for the period
2nd week—a “mid-month”, which was short for “mid-month profit projection”
4th week—a profit and loss statement, using actual figures for rent and utilities sent us by corporate
This was before stores had computers, so we learned how to calculate these things by hand. I could turn over a sheet of paper, figure my contribution margin, and scratch out a break-even analysis (and therefore a profit calculation) by hand. Thirty-nine times a year—more if your trainer insisted you do the work more than once, which mine did.
Part of the motivation behind this intense training was the idea that each of these corporate managers might one day buy their own store or stores. They weren’t just training potential managers; they were training future franchisees. It was an intense training program with the goal of creating business owners.
Starting Manager Training: John
While I worked for a couple of different managers during that period, I had two primary trainers. The first, John, trained at least 6 people up to their own store. He had a reputation throughout the market for being a strong trainer. People wanted his MITs in their stores.
John ran a highly profitable store, made even more impressive by the fact that he always had rookies running the place, and he paid them well. While I worked for John, I was the highest-paid trainee in the area (wages were standardized, but I got the hours I wanted). In addition to Domino’s-specific stuff that isn’t the point of this discussion, John taught me the fundamentals of employee management, the benefits of ongoing training, and how to best use my time during a shift or a week.
Completing Training: Mike
The second trainer, Mike, had the reputation of running outstanding numbers. He turned a giant profit for the company while ensuring that he earned as much as the system allowed. For example, he discovered an exploit in the system where he and another manager could get paid an additional day by working at each other’s stores one day a week, which gave him and his friend a 20% increase in income for the same number of hours worked.
Later, after his promotion to area supervisor, Mike aimed for a $14,000 profit in his first period, the target assigned by the company. He felt disappointed when he reported a $56,000 profit because his personal goal was to quintuple the company’s target. Under Mike, I learned how to scrutinize costs, maximize the value of labor, and leverage assets for maximum benefit. I really learned how to appreciate the profit benefit of add-on sales.
After Domino’s
John stayed in the franchise system, but this time at Subway. He opened one store while training and bought his own store. John is no longer with us, but his store provided for him well and it currently sees (under his wife’s ownership) over $8,000 a week in sales in a town of 2,900 people.
Mike also bought his own business. He bought a courier service 28 years ago that he still runs. I haven’t spoken to him lately, but revenues were $200,000/year when he bought it, and the last sales report had him at $1.2 million annually. Fascinatingly, he pays his drivers a 60% commission on each delivery but I’ve seen him run over 40% gross profit. I know two factors that contribute to this seeming discrepancy. If you want to take a guess, reach out and I’ll tell you if you’re right.
Lessons From the System
The company system taught me the value of standardized training. When I started FLGS, I didn’t need an operations manual. My partner and I did everything ourselves. We didn’t hire anyone for about 6 months. But I had a table of contents and an outline before we even opened. We had the kernels of our content almost immediately—daily checklists for opening and closing tasks. Then I added things like uniform standards as we added employees.
Now it’s a 56-page document available in print for quick reference at the counter or PDF for latest reference and searching ability. It includes intense detail regarding every operation that happens in the store, from opening the front door on entry to sales, receiving, online sales, pricing policies, and closing up at night. If we ever encountered anything not in there, we added it.
The corporate background also prepared me for operating multiple stores. While my 3 stores were in different markets and had some specific differences because they were bought (as opposed to opened from scratch), my plan for the next year was to homogenize methods 100% so that crew and management were wholly interchangeable. That’s a big help with covering shifts, promoting managers as needed, and improving the customer experience overall.
Differences
Obviously, we don’t make pizzas at FLGS. There are other differences. For one, I don’t have to worry about delivery (I thought about it as an option, but I did not pursue it for reasons I don’t need to go into right now). But less obviously, the number of SKUs I restock on a regular basis is enormously different. Domino’s had 10 toppings when I started, two sizes of dough patties, one sauce, two sizes of boxes…the entire list fit on a single page and could be counted in 15 minutes.
Another obvious difference is that I had to do all this work myself instead of having it done for me. On the other hand, having read the procedures and training manuals at Domino’s gave me a broad template that I could repurpose for my own use.
Clearly, a fully-stocked game store with a broad inventory base needs hours of counting. With practice and refinement of methods, I could count my major general restocks in less than 2 hours, but that still leaves lists of less efficiency for several more hours of counting.
Staffing is much simpler in a game store. In almost all cases, I have one person on duty to cover the counter. For high-traffic times, we double up. Shift transfers take a few minutes. In case of a call-out (which was very rare for the first 20 years, very common in the last 2 years), the salaried manager arranges coverage or works the shift himself. If nobody else does it, I do it.
Customers can steal from a game store. In a delivery-based restaurant, there’s almost no theft. Theft on a delivery was a big deal because it was almost always armed robbery. Theft in the store was all done by employees, and the systems in place made that easy to do but difficult to do undetected. I implemented systems to prevent or detect theft.
Recap
The methods and systems I learned from the management training program at Domino’s absolutely gave me the background I needed to own my own business. Where the skills didn’t transfer, they gave me a comparison that I could adapt to my needs. The opportunity is lost with the changes in Domino’s over the past several decades, but undoubtedly other situations similar to that are out there now. Maybe you’re in one and haven’t assessed it from this point of view.
If you’re looking for a similar opportunity while you plan your store, keep an eye on this list of fastest-growing franchises: https://www.entrepreneur.com/franchises/directory/fastest-growing-ranking.
