When Patrick Doyle was the treasurer of his college fraternity, he bore the unenviable task of collecting his brothers’ house rent and dues. But according to his fellow Sigma Phi, Rob Pollock, the indefatigably amiable Doyle never cajoled or nagged them for their funds. He just appealed to them as a friend.
“Their moms and dads just gave them cash, and it was bar night, but he got them to pay their bills!” said Pollock, now an investment advisor and a golfing buddy of Doyle’s. “He just had an uncanny way of getting them to give him their money.”
This past March, when he was appointed chief executive of Ann Arbor, Mich.-based Domino’s Pizza, Doyle got a similar job: Convincing millions of people to give the delivery king money for its pizza.
Title: chief executive
Company: Domino’s Pizza
Birth date: June 4, 1963
Career highlights: lived in France working for InterVascular Inc.; managed operations for Gerber Foods’ Canadian arm; ran Domino’s Pizza International
Hometown: Midland, Mich.
Education: B.S. in economics from University of Michigan; MBA from University of Chicago
Personal: married, two daughters
Hobbies: family time, travel, snow skiing and golf
Problem is, nice-guy attributes help little when customers never see the big cheese. They do help, though, when convincing thousands of U.S. store operators their core product needs a very public overhaul. That takes a team builder who instills great trust, Pollock added.
“Pat is the perfect model for a CEO because he’s all about the team and bringing others along,” Pollock said. “He was a leader in college, and he’s still one now. He’s just one of those thoughtful guys you wish would get into politics.”
Or get to run the world’s second-largest pizza company, an assignment for which former chief executive Dave Brandon spent years grooming Doyle. Just eight weeks after Brandon was appointed chief executive of Domino’s in 1999, he named Doyle head of its international division. In their few weeks working together stateside, Brandon recognized how peers gravitated to Doyle for advice and admired his knack for project leadership. So he dug up Doyle’s résumé and learned of his experience working in international markets for Gerber and InterVascular, Inc.
“I was building my team and looking for hungry, high- potential folks to step in and make things happen quickly,” said Brandon, now athletic director at the University of Michigan. “I was convinced he could do that, and, by God, he did.”
Former colleagues called Doyle a big-picture thinker who smartly chooses detail-oriented people. When faced with populating the world with Domino’s stores in 1999, he turned to former Gerber finance colleague Mike Lawton to manage the chain’s international business. The sale was an easy one.
“I’d always admired Patrick when I worked with him at Gerber, so his opinion carried a lot of weight with me,” said Lawton, now Domino’s chief financial officer. “Some people just stand out, and he did at Gerber. He still does.”
Doyle relished the challenge of building what he called Domino’s “side business back then. It was there, but it was not a primary part of our business.” In five years, he helped double the number of overseas units from 1,730 stores. And when he cut the ribbon on Domino’s 9,000th store this spring — his first official act as chief executive — it was in India, where the chain now has 300 stores.
“[Founder] Tom Monaghan took it from zero to 6,000 stores, and Dave took it to 9,000,” he said. “Now we have to see how I’ll do.”
Domestic growth
Despite claims that store growth in the U.S. pizza segment is stagnant, Doyle believes there’s room for 1,000 more Domino’s units here. Only 70 percent of the population lives within delivery distance of a Domino’s unit, and there’s still room to grow within populated areas. International growth will be less of a battle, he said.
“Let’s just say I’m not worrying about a lack of growth opportunities overseas during the time that I’ll be CEO of the company,” said the 47-year-old Doyle.
His big-picture mind-set was an asset when he was made vice president with responsibility for the chain’s domestic corporate stores in 2005. His international perspective revealed communication was happening largely between headquarters and operators, but he was convinced it would be more effective if operators spoke directly to other operators, no matter where they were.
“It used to be just the company moving ideas from market to market,” Doyle said. “But now that happens organically. Operators are talking to each other and moving ideas on their own, which is terrific. Our biggest international franchisee talks regularly with franchisees in the U.S. It’s had an incredible effect on our business.”
Many challenges
In 2007, Doyle was promoted to a newly created position of president over the chain’s entire domestic system. And while rumors circulated that the position was a logical grooming step in his ascension to the chief executive’s post, Doyle had too many challenges before him to acknowledge chatter about the future.
First on his list was reinvigorating U.S. same-store sales. Doyle applied his marketing experience to the task and helped engineer the “You’ve Got 30” campaign that centered on Domino’s delivery heritage.
“But it was a disaster and wasn’t at all compelling to customers,” Doyle said.
When U.S. same-store sales sank in 2008, the pressure for drastic change increased dramatically. The company needed product news to catch customers’ attention, and it looked squarely at its core pizza.
“People had always given us credit for being great at delivery, but they weren’t giving us credit for the taste of our pizza,” he said, “and it was then we decided to do something dramatically different.”
For the next 18 months, Doyle spearheaded the overhaul of Domino’s pie. Research group after tasting panel confirmed a spicy sauce, a new cheese blend and a flavored crust were great improvements, and a dramatic rollout was scheduled for the winter of 2010. Domino’s took to the airwaves with a bold marketing move: It let customers criticize its pizza publicly and then promised a completely new one.
“Yes, there certainly was a little bit of a knot in my stomach when launching,” Doyle recalled. “But we had tested that pizza so thoroughly and knew it was right that we had tremendous confidence it would stand up to the boldness of the advertising.”
He was right. U.S. comp-store sales shot up 14.3 percent in this year’s first quarter, followed by another surge of 8.8 percent in the second quarter.
“Customers had to understand that this was not a couple-month promotion,” Doyle said. “We re-launched this brand.”
Cheryl Bachelder was Domino’s chief marketing officer when she hired Doyle as her department vice president in 1998. Even while president at KFC USA and now as chief executive at Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen, she’s followed Doyle’s progress closely, proud but not surprised her former charge and friend is having such a positive impact in Ann Arbor. No challenge that Doyle has been given at Domino’s has been easy; however, his gift for making the impossible seem simple keeps yielding successes, Bachelder said.
“He’s a very smart man — the type who looks at a problem and breaks it down to a two-part solution,” she said.
His ceaselessly positive attitude, she added, encourages meaningful collaboration.
“You ask people, ‘Have you ever seen Patrick Doyle not smiling?’ and they always answer, ‘No!’ I’ve been in rooms where we’re discussing very difficult matters, and he’s still smiling. What can I say? The world needs more Patricks.”
