For those who have long desired to make their own pizza toppings, there is a new mobile application allowing customers to design and market new pizzas while keeping a slice of the profits.
The concept is being pioneered by Australia’s Domino Pizza Enterprises thanks to an app dubbed “Pizza Mogul” allowing pizza enthusiasts to take their culinary creations from fantasy to reality.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the app is an “experiment in marketing and eater-generated social media” in which customers become co-participants in the promotion and advertisement of the end product.
The campaign was launched in July, with Dominos signing up in excess of 30,000 so-called “pizza moguls” who receive between 25c and $3.25 per pizza depending on the toppings.
The moguls have to advertise their pizza on social media in order to get the returns from their creation. All they have to do is sign up online, create a pizza (which is uploaded to the Dominos menu in minutes) and share it with their friends.
The concept is also helping to instil a new sense of entrepreneurial initiative in younger people with some moguls still being teenagers hoping to raise money to finance overseas holidays.
Dominos Chief Executive, Don Meij, told Brisbane’s Courier Mail last week the moguls were the equivalent of having 30,000 stores and that the “top mogul” had pocketed $35,000 dollars.
“In the old days if we had 600 stores, we’d have 600 stores promoting Dominos but now we have another 30,000,” he said.
Thanks to the initiative, the pizza franchise is expecting full year earnings to rise by 25 per cent – up from an earlier forecast of 20 per cent – with about 60 per cent of sales in Australia and New Zealand being online.