Russia’s pizza king wants to use cloud to take over the world

Bloomberg

Once you crack the profit code for delivering hot pizzas in the Arctic, where blocks of cheese arrive on nuclear icebreakers, expanding into more hospitable climes like Britain and Nigeria is as easy as pie.
Or so says Fyodor Ovchinnikov, the freshly crowned franchise czar of Russia and soon, he’s betting, beyond. From a single basement oven in his native Syktyvkar in the Far North, the failed bookseller and serial blogger has turned Dodo Pizza into one of Europe’s fastest-growing restaurant chains, leapfrogging Papa John’s, Domino’s and Pizza Hut in his home market in just eight years.
An archaeologist by education, Ovchinnikov, 38, and his franchisees have opened 457 pizzerias in Russia and 69 in 11 other countries. Dodo owns 23 of those itself, including its new flagship in China. Now he’s planning to add another 1,000 in Europe, Asia and Africa over the next five years, a goal few people in the industry doubt he can achieve.
That’s because of a secret sauce that isn’t edible, but ethereal—Dodo IS, a proprietary mix of application software and analytics stored in the cloud. Overseen by a “chief agile officer” and maintained by 120 technicians, it provides, among many other things, instant monitoring of cash flows, inventories and service times at every location in the network, all viewable with just a few taps on a tablet. And mandatory, live-streaming kitchen cams allow anyone with an internet connection to watch a Dodo pizza being made.
“We’re a cyborg company,” Ovchinnikov said in an interview at Dodo’s headquarters in Moscow. “We’re half food and half tech. That’s our advantage. We’re incredibly efficient.”
Dodo is also incredibly open for a successful enterprise in Russia, where shakedowns by authorities are a major gripe of many business owners. The company publishes much of the financial data it collects online, even revenue for the 500-plus franchise restaurants. Weekly sales in dollar terms, for example, recently ranged from $48,164 at Dodo No. 2 in Novy Urengoy in Siberia to $1,329 at Dodo No. 2 in Karaganda, Kazakhstan. Two of the highest-grossing outlets are inside the Arctic Circle, in Norilsk and Salekhard.
Another selling point of Dodo, which Ovchinnikov’s programmers are working on now, is the ability to automatically create marketing campaigns for individual locales when sales dip below a certain threshold. Or, as he likes to put it, “when labour productivity is getting low.”
Such simplicity and what Dodo refers to in its manifesto as “the principle of radical transparency” are winning converts around the globe.
Ovchinnikov recently sold the franchise rights for Nigeria to Quality Foods Africa, the same group of British investors that brought Krispy Kreme to that continent’s most populous country last year. QFA Director Alex Trotter said the first of a planned 20 Dodos will open this month in Lagos. “This industry is becoming a technology business and Dodo’s at the top of the class,” Trotter said.
A featured speaker at tech conferences who’s been hailed by Microsoft for his pioneering use of its cloud platforms, Ovchinnikov refuses to work with delivery apps like Yandex.Eats and Delivery Club in Russia. He says they sever the final link with customers that his well-coached drivers complete.