Like nearly all QSR restaurants in 2022, Domino’s faced monumental recruiting and hiring challenges within an increasingly selective labor market. In the midst of a nationwide delivery driver shortage, they needed to make a business pivot that would boost carryout orders (which require significantly less manpower than delivery) ultimately relieving pressure on shorthanded stores and current delivery drivers. Pulling it off required changing a core customer behavior that we’ve ingrained over several decades: after years of Domino’s innovating new and unique ways to deliver your pizza, now it’s your turn to take the wheel.

Tipping your pizza delivery driver is a practice as old as pizza delivery itself. But in the midst of a historic labor shortage, there simply weren’t enough drivers to tip—or deliver pizzas. So we turned to a group who already had the skillset to deliver for Domino’s, our own carryout customers, and tipped them $3 for doing what they already do well––delivering their own pizza to themselves. Now when you pick up Domino’s, you’re no longer just a customer. You’re a delivery driver. Turning the tip convention on its head would not only reward existing carryout customers, but also inspire more people to order carryout instead of delivery when driver staffing was low. After all, as a brand that’s known for our delivery expertise, we believe that every great delivery deserves a tip. Even if the delivery driver is also the customer.

While Domino’s was facing a very real staffing shortage, there was no shortage of demand for pizza delivery during the pandemic. The brand needed an immediate, strategic solution that would encourage a significant portion of customers to switch from delivery to carryout. The key message was that carryout customers can now be rewarded for serving as their own delivery driver. Why? Because they deserve it. To reach the target audience of delivery customers, the PR outreach spanned across local and national outlets, including national business media, food media, advertising trade media, and media outlets in the top 10 markets across the U.S. Photos and links to the TV spots were offered to media, to support this story.

The Carryout Tips campaign launched nationwide in the US on January 31, 2022, supported by multiple TV broadcast spots, digital video, radio ads, live-reads, paid social, out-of-home and direct mail. The campaign will continue to run until May 22, 2022. Each carryout customer was able to claim their Carryout Tip directly after purchase on the Domino's app, or via order confirmation email. Once claimed, they could redeem their tip as a $3 discount on another Domino’s order the following week. Once customers claimed their tip the following week, they received another tip on that order—continuing in perpetuity. By linking each tip to a future order, we were able to reduce the average purchase cycle, encouraging incremental return carryout orders.

While we legally are not able to disclose official sales results yet, the public and press reaction to Carryout Tips has been overwhelmingly positive. The brand action has been picked up by dozens of prime media outlet, generating over 2 billion earned media impressions. Considering the brand’s overarching goal of shifting their customer mindset and behavior away from delivery and towards carryout, the campaign has been a clear success. The discount mechanic not only encouraged repeat carryout purchases, but by limiting tips to online orders only, we were able to traffic the entire experience through Domino’s digital channels––furthering consumer engagement with the website, email and app, rather than labor-intensive phone calls in stores.