Domino's selling one in six home delivered meals

Domino's Pizza believes it is selling one in six of every home delivered meal in the UK.

The pizza chain, which now has 501 stores in the UK, saw its sales increase by 23.4% to £296.3m from £240.1m in 2006. Its pre-tax profits rose by 33.1% to £18.7m.

Domino's continued to feel the benefits of its online and text message ordering systems as sales through the internet rose by 60.2% in 2007 to £32.2m or 16% of all pizzas delivered in 2007.

This year has started strongly for Domino's online ordering with one in five pizzas (21%) sold in the first six weeks of the year over the internet. Overall like-for-like sales in the first weeks of 2008 are up by 11%.

Chris Moore, chief executive of Domino's Pizza, said the company has to be mindful that it was only halfway towards its goal of 1,000 UK stores by 2017 but current social and economic trends were favourable.

Moore cited research by analyst group Mintel which estimated the size of the home delivered food market in the UK to be £1.5b. Given Domino's current sales Moore believed that Domino's was responsible for one in six home delivered meals.

"The popularity of home delivered food shows no signs of slowing down and lifestyle factors such as longer working weeks, more dual income households, more in-home entertainment and more one person households work in our favour."

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By Christopher Walton

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