The Pizza & Coffee Wars

As disruption through digitization continues to spread, it provides companies with opportunities to capitalize on the digital habits of their customers. The brands that can make the customer experience a digital one wields a major advantage over their competitors, regardless of industry. Domino’s Pizza and Starbucks Coffee are two brands that effectively capitalized on changing customer habits, and as a result, are now titans in their respective food and beverage industries.

In 2008, Domino’s Pizza stock value hit rock bottom. By 2020, its stock value was 112x higher. (1) It is the only company growing at a faster rate than Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, or Google in that same period. (2) It is one of the few businesses able to thrive throughout the global coronavirus pandemic. The exponential growth of its brand was possible thanks to one crucial pivot: Domino’s stopped being a pizza company and became a tech company that sells pizza. It all started with an “We’re Sorry for Sucking” advertising campaign with the CEO talking directly to the campaign admitting the many flaws and shortcomings from Domino’s and the pizza industry as a whole. At the end of the commercial shares a simple promise that Domino’s would do better. Only Popeye’s Chicken Sandwich war against Chick-fil-a’s chicken sandwich empire that launched them into viral relevance in November 2019 created better results for a fast-food…