Domino’s Pizza has predicted two-thirds of its deliveries to be ordered online within four years, after its half-year results showed a huge rise in Internet business.
The company, which also plans to triple marketing spend in the next six months, says online sales rose by 50.9% to hit £85m, in the 26 weeks to June 26, up from £56.9m at the same time last year. Domino’s said ecommerce was “still one of our major drivers as we take ownership of this space in our sector.”
Some 41.9% of sales are now made online, compared to 32.7% at the same time last year. Orders through the company’s iPhone app, released in September 2010, now account for 4.1% of online orders and an iPad app is soon to be released.
“This growth in online sales is further supported by extensive activity within the social media arena,” said Domino’s. That includes using Facebook to launch special offers on new pizzas that link directly to the customer’s ordering basket online. Quick Reponse codes on advertising also take the customer directly to the Domino’s online ordering site. The company is also using social media at a local level, with individual stores promoting Foursquare and Facebook deals through Facebook and Twitter.
Rival Pizza Hut recently invested in a new data operation to enable it to handle the 1 million orders it gets a week.
The fast rise in Domino’s online sales came as the company unveiled a 9% rise in company-wide sales to £258.4m, up from £237.1m at the same time last year. Like-for-like sales slowed, rising 2.4% against a period last year when sales were up by 13.7%. Pre-tax profits rose by 14.8% to £20.1m, up from £17.5m last time.
Chief executive Chris Moore said: “While the first half of the year has been tough, we are delighted we are still showing good growth in the UK and the latter half of the year comes with lower comparatives so we are confident we will see or like-for-like sales grow more strongly in the next 26 weeks.
“Our marketing spend to the year end will be three times the amount for the second half of 2010 and, combined with some great new products and a heavyweight brand campaign in the coming months we are very excited about the future.”
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