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I'm sorry but I don't agree. Dominos pizza has coupons, deals, etc. Trying to get those deals over the phone is a chore. Ordering specific toppings can be a chore since it's a relay back and forth vs a button. Multiple pizzas with multiple toppings? The delay just compounds. If you live alone and order one pizza or one style of specific themed pizzas then sure, it might be faster, if that's the metric of "best" but in no way is the phone superior to the app or website. Ever call a pizza place when they are slammed, usually when you order pizza? The guy or girl on the phone is in an absolute rush to get you off the phone for the next person who still uses the phone to call in. I just don't agree.

There is one exception to this rule, pizza places who are not the big three. The mom and pop who doesn't have an app.

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But then you would have to eat... Dominos. I get that its not the same everywhere, but in the pizza belt, I couldn't imagine going there. Luckily my local place has a good website though.

I used to hate dominoes but at some point they changed their recipe. It’s ok pizza now as far as big chain pizza goes.

They did change their recipe, between 2008 and 2010. Thanks Obama!

I remember being amused that they advertised the change pretty heavily, and the tone was pretty explicit about saying "we don't suck now!"

They weren’t wrong ;)

The pizza belt?

Basically NYC and the metro sprawl around NYC all the way up and down the coast

You mean the "Chicago and the sprawl around it all the way up to Maine along the great lakes" right?

https://i.imgur.com/GOvnHcv.png

Sorry coasties, Chicago's the new pizza capital

Good choice of username for a new account. It's yours for life now!

Thanks I couldn't stand to read yet another pizza misinformation

Better to go with a throwaway per topic.

Otherwise in ten years we'll be reading an article on The Atlantic that leads with a CEO behind bars, jumps to a young kid learning about the world in his uncle's Pizzeria, then to a shady security team searching for the whistleblower by cross referencing HN posts against employee catering habits, and finally a retired FBI agent that steps in to provide protection.

So yeah, pizzasnob, please don't start talking about your love for dobermans.

That linked graphic seems to show Burgers is the main go-to in Chicago. That said, I'm a huge fan of Chicago deep dish. I know some don't call that a proper pizza (esp New Yawkers, and I'm in the area), but I do love that Gino's pizza.

If I had an office in Manhattan, I’d probably eat NY pizza for lunch at least once every two weeks. Chicago deep dish, on the other hand, is more like a special occasion food. Once a year, twice a year, maybe. But I’ll certainly go on record that the crust on a good Chicago deep dish is the best pizza crust you’ll ever encounter. I love that crunchy texture.

It will always be NYC for me, never Chicago.

As far as delivery pizza goes, Dominos is actually not bad now. They upped their game considerably. Still not as good as my local mom & pop shop, but I wouldn't turn my nose up at a Dominos pizza.

Best trash pizza out there. We don’t have many places by me but we have one great Italian place. Guy running the shop makes a mean pie but not the best customer service and this pandemic has not eased things for him. But once again the pizza is amazing so I have no problem ordering early and still waiting at least an hour.

Pizza is like sez: even when it's bad, it's still pretty good.

When I used to live in Rochester, NY I ate Dominos because it was the best pizza in town. Rochester is a pizza wasteland. Or at least it was when I lived there.

That might be the very definition of a wasteland - when Dominos is the best in town.

Salvatore’s was better.

I'd go with OP too. Dominos was our best bet circa 2007-10.

> Luckily my local place has a good website though.

My local place has a website that doesn't quite meet the standard I'd hope for. But it does work, and if you order through it, they'll get your order right. It's a lot less hassle than ordering over the phone.

Really depends on the location, Cleveland has horrible Dominos, Cincinnati Dominos is pretty good, and Portland dominos is also pretty good.

In my experience the difference is per store. Some in my city are good and some are bad, all dominos.

Dunno if Domino's is comparable internationally (at least the sizes are smaller here in Germany), but I actually like ordering "unordinary" pizza from them now and then. Things any Italian would cringe at. They are cheap, deliver quick and have reasonable quality. It's just not at all Italian pizza.

Then again, from my experience it was hard to find true Italian pizza in the US.

Fun anecdote: When I was in NYC I walked into a corner pizza place in Little Italy that sold these giant slices to-go. I asked them if they also sold Tiramisu. To my utter surprise the 3 or 4 Italian Americans present didn't even know what Tiramisu is. That day I learned it was actually just invented around 1980 in Italy. Today it's one of the absolute favorite deserts in Germany and every Italian restaurant serves it and even many non-italian have it.

NYC pizza by the slice in its own unique category. It’s so iconic that living near Washington DC, there was a pizza place that imported the city water of NYC in order to be able to make authentic NYC pizza dough. Blanking on the name of the place unfortunately.

> Then again, from my experience it was hard to find true Italian pizza in the US.

A useful keyword to look out for if you want something (similar to) Italian pizza in the US is a restaurant that's marketed as "wood fired" or "brick oven". This will pretty much always get you a Napoletana-style pizza, regardless of your current US regional specialties.

I agree with the author and you. I think Dominos is the exception though. Pizza places aren't nearly as painful as other places that have javascript bloated, every single interaction has a spinner, there's too much whitespace ordering apps.

Looking at you Applebee's.

>Pizza places aren't nearly as painful as other places that have javascript bloated, every single interaction has a spinner, there's too much whitespace ordering apps.

Maybe I just have more patience than the average person, but I haven't seen a site with enough bloated javascript/spinners/whitespace that would cause me to reach for alternatives (phone or otherwise).

Pizza Hut is just as easy. Grub hub and other online ordering platforms have also been working fine for years now. What the author completely ignores is that you only enter your data once. Also there’s much less chance for any miscommunication and repeat orders are much easier and faster. It’s like having a shortcut for pizza.

The last time I ate at Applebees is the last time I will eat at Applebees.

What do you even want to takeout order from there?

I assume they're open real late. Otherwise yeah wth?

> Dominos pizza has coupons, deals, etc

I find this part of the dominos model quite frustrating - you pay almost twice as much, or else spend an unreasonable amount of time dealing with the whole coupon thing. I guess it should be viewed as a tax against people who’s time is more valuable than hunting around the internet for coupon codes.

Pretty great price discrimination model - at least in the short/medium run.

The same coupons are supposed to be available to everyone. That was sort of the point of the lawsuit. Ha.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterslatin/2019/10/08/the-supr...

https://medium.com/front-end-weekly/dominos-pizza-and-web-ac...

An app or webpage is also a very good way to figure out what you want when you have 3 or 4 family members involved with their opinion and negotiations.

When I was in college I could call my local Dominos, ask for a large pizza and a two liter of soda and at the end say "if I pick it up will you double it?" They never said no. A local pizza shop always offered the same deal so Dominos had no choice. Good luck doing that in an app.

Is this in the 80s or, like, 2019? I've never heard of this "will you double it" thing before. Is it just because the other local shop did it, or would you expect this to work at any Dominos?

This was in the late 2000s. I don't think it would work at any other Dominos. It was just to match the other local shop.

The connection I was trying to make is I didn't have to cut a coupon, that is pretty much the best possible pizza deal and it was always available.

Domino's here has a straight 50% off for students. Lots of late pizza delivery study sessions were had.

That's the entire point.

Dominos is happy to offer you those coupons and deals etc, in exchange for using Dominos's preferred platform (its website, which doesn't cost minimum wage) and providing your user data (via channel tracking the coupon, logging in etc).

A decent pizza place will charge more to let you skip all that.

In the age of data and free, ad driven services, "you get what you pay for" is paramount.

Dominos is totally still aggregating data like that for over the phone orders. They just tag it with your phone number and address instead of a user account.

So they get my address, phone number, and email as user data correct? I mean what could they possibly gain from that with my benefit being free pizza and much cheaper prices. Now with Apple login they don't even gain my real email address.

They still track you with your phone number anyway. Unless their app is pulling data from your phone, I'm not exactly sure what they're gaining here.

That data is worth shit, the only people that care when and to where you order pizza are the NSA, and they already have your cell data and the GPS from your car. What Domino's gets is you being mildly rewarded for committing time to learning their app, which will make you more likely to come back.

Tricking people into learning non-transferable skills is a tactic. If your hard earned skills in configuring your iphone aren't going to transfer to android, neither are you.

The Dominos app is actually extremely well done. The UI is intuitive, has a ton of options for payments, shows exactly whats going on with your order, etc.

Domino's was best when they sold only pizza and Coca-Cola. Just Coca-Cola. No diet, no Sprite, no other choices. No choice of crust. No choice of sauce. That's what they built their empire on.

I'd go further, actually, and offer only one size; cheese, pepperoni, or sausage. No half this or that -- if you want two different toppings, buy two pizzas.

The apps suck (and ordering on the phone can suck also) because there are too many choices and apps suck when they have to offer lot of choices. That's why Apple tries to eliminate choices and options wherever they can.

What halcyon era of Dominos pizza are you remembering? Dominos has had a choice of crusts for about 30 years now that I can remember.

1980s and earlier.

Lol a grudge you’ve been carrying for quite awhile.

You just miss the 30 minutes or less guarantee risking the lives of everyone just admit it lol.

We call those the good old days.

I actually delivered for Dominos in those days. The 30 minute guarantee was not the reason drivers were dangerous. Stores had a limited delivery area that was set up so that you could get anywhere in about 10 minutes at normal traffic speeds. Drivers were not punished for late deliveries; in most cases when that happened, you and the manger both knew it was going to be late before it left the store.

The reason some drivers were reckless is because there was a commission on each delivery (and you often got tips as well). The more you delivered, the more money you made. In reality it didn't amount to much because you can't really drive much faster than the prevailing average traffic, you burned more fuel and wore out your brakes and tires if you drove like an idiot, but some drivers did anyway. It was heavily discouraged by the managers, at least where I worked.

Dominos was the worst fast food pizza up until about 2008 when they changed their recipe, offered a 555 deal, and added online orders.

Dominos has been abusing push notifications on iOS recently. They have two push notification settings, one for order events (being made, in the oven, ready for pickup), one for marketing. Even with marketing off, they've been sending marketing notifications. Dislike.

Yikes. I don’t bother with the app- their mobile web is way better.

The first time an order app starts abusing the notifications for advertisements I uninstall it and start looking for a competitor to give my business. No second chances.

For an app like Domino's or MacDonald's or the like, I just install it on demand and then uninstall it after using it. There's no way I'm keeping it around.

Works great just opening the site in a browser here (UK)

Same experience as the app, no notifications

Misuse of push notifications means an immediate loss of push notification permissions for me.

Who is in the pizza "Big Three" anyway? Domino's, Pizza Hut, Little Caesars?

Papa Johns probably replaces one of those. Just not sure whether it’s LC or PH.

Edit: tried to look it up, I think your original list is accurate

Today I learned that Little Caesar's is a bigger pizza chain than Papa John's[1]. As of 2018, the top five are:

1. Domino's, with 14,856 "units" and $12.2 billion in gross sales.

2. Pizza Hut, with 16,784 units and $12.0 billion in gross sales.

3. Little Caesar's, with 5,500 units and $4.0 billion.

4. Papa John's, with 5,199 units and $3.7 billion.

5. California Pizza Kitchen, with 267 units and $840 million.

Everything after Papa John's is a long tail. Strangely, revenue in the long tail is not obviously proportional to the number of units. So instead of a top three, there's really a top two, a next two, and everyone else.

[1] https://pizzatoday.com/pizzeria-rankings/2018-top-100-pizza-...

And the best pizza comes from "units" of 1 with only six figure sales.

Hasn’t MOD Pizza effectively replaced California pizza kitchen (which closed all their locations in my metro after their 2020 bankruptcy) as the west coast choice (500 units, $390 million)? It helps that they don’t try to be a full service like California pizza kitchen and focus on just really custom pizza.

Huh, I wouldn't have expected any of these numbers, given that Boston has a zillion Domino's and, at best, one each of the others.

Plus paying with a debit card over the phone is a massive pain

Dominos isn't pizza.

Yeah, if your fussy.

One margarita large.

The coupons are the biggest advantage to placing orders online. If you place your order over the phone, they aren't going to offer any promos - they'll gladly charge you $16 for a medium 1 topping. Gotta get the coupon to get the 5.99 special.

I worked at a pizza place as a kid, we were told to apply coupons regardless if they mentioned it.

Probably a midwestern thing.

It was a chore.

You and the person you're responding to are saying the same thing.

If you call you won't have a coupon, and they aren't going to tell you about any, therefore you're paying more. How do you find coupons? Check online, but now you're already there so why not just order it there?

A lot of coupons work either online or over the phone, but they're only advertised online and therefore that advantaged is largely to avoid more accessibility/disability lawsuits.

>If you call you won't have a coupon, and they aren't going to tell you about any

They will, I worked at both Pizza Hut and Dominos twenty years ago and if you asked for the specials we'd basically tell you the coupons. I think our script even said "would you like to hear the specials today?"

That's just a generic special, that's not a coupon. A coupon is exactly what it sounds like - it literally requires a coupon to redeem, either a physical coupons or a digital "coupon."

When I worked at a restaurant we had both - specials that everyone got and coupons deals that you needed a piece of paper for. They were similar as it was just typing a code into the register, the big difference is typing in the coupon code without a piece of paper was considered stealing and anyone who did that was fired on the spot. You also couldn't redeem multiple coupons at once where you could get any number of open specials you wanted. We always directed customers towards specials.

The coupons were a significantly better deal than the general specials available to anyone. The coupons were mailed to every house in a ~20 mile radius once a month.

Yeah, neither Pizza Hut nor Dominos we're actually that concerned about the coupons. Both places had drivers apply coupons to orders and pocket the differences, and while I'm sure they would have gotten fired if caught, not having the correct amount of coupons would lead you to be caught.

I think there were one or two actual coupons at Pizza Hut, where you did need the actual code and the piece of paper, but they were things in the coupon books kids would sell to raise money. At Dominos basically the best deal was the carryout special, which is now even advertised online.

Rereading my post

>would lead you to be caught.

Wouldn't. Pretty significant mistake from me.

One guy barely hid that he did it, he spent like ten minutes on the computer before any delivery. Except when the owner was there.

The other person mentioned paying full price because of the lack of a coupon.

I am describing just giving them that deal regardless.

The problem is that the coupons exist in the first place. It's a solution to a problem that shouldn't exist at all.

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