Domino's Eight-Year Foray Into Italy Ends in Liquidation (detroitnews.com) 85
Domino's Pizza's franchise in Italy has entered into liquidation, after a short-lived struggle to win over customers in the birthplace of pizza. From a report: A Milan-based judge opened liquidation proceedings for Domino's franchise partner, ePizza, last week, according to a filing with the local chamber of commerce seen by Bloomberg News. A court-ordered liquidation could result in a recovery for creditors of 5% of their exposure, according to a draft restructuring plan seen by Bloomberg News that was submitted last year by the Milan-based firm and its financial advisers. The last of Domino's 29 Italian branches closed last summer, ending a foray that began in 2015 with the U.S. brand touting pizza toppings that included pineapple and barbecue chicken, an unusual take in a country more accustomed to thin-crust margheritas. Over the years, the Ann Arbor-based fast-food chain's partner borrowed heavily for ambitious plans to open 880 stores.
Italians like pizza (Score:5, Funny)
They don't seem to be too keen on what ever it is that Domino's makes.
Re:Italians like pizza (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Italians like pizza (Score:5, Interesting)
It doesn't really compare to what they have. There are pizzas here that are better, but Domino's isn't going to be in that class.
It doesn't really compare to them at all. What Italians eat on "Pizza" is vastly different from what Americans eat. We'd scarcely recognize it as pizza at all. I was surprised the first time I had pizza in Italy. They put all manner of things in their pizza... mostly vegetables... that Americans would never consider. It was like having a tomato-based vegetable stew on a crust. Pizza, as its been popularized around the world, is really an American food.
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Do Italians put pineapple on their pizza?
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Re: Italians like pizza (Score:2)
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Unless you're in Sweden. In Sweden the... I dunno, lets call it varm platt brÃd, features things like bananas, peanuts, potatoes, mayonnaise, the most bizarre stuff imaginable. We used to keep going back to this one varm platt brÃd place to see what other bizarre construction we'd discover on the menu, it was food for entertainment value rather than because it was good food.
Ah, it was this place [kryddanpizzeria.se].You want TomatsÃ¥s, Ost, Ananas, Curry, Banan, JordnÃtter on a pizza? You got it. To
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> I understand Chinese food in China is also very different from what Chinese restaurants selling North America
Not my experience. I've eaten at somewhat overpriced restaurants in China and the food was different.
We escaped the Western enclave and went to a much cheaper place that the local ate at and it tasted like my local Chinese take away.
China is a big place with a diverse food culture, but my one data point says there is some overlap.
Hong Kong, where I've been more than other places in China has its
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Chinese food in the US has greatly improved in recent decades. For a long time it was only vaguely recognizable, with starchy gelatinous "chop suey" and the like. Also dirt cheap. Then Chinese food in larger cities started getting more upscale with more focus on quality, as well as having more than Americanized Cantonese style.
Of course, now that it's upscale it sometimes resembles upscale food in China, not average food. In most countries, the gourmet food has little relation to folk food eaten in the co
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I've got several data points from China, and it depends on the dish. Availability of ingredients and local laws regulating the amounts of some things play a part, as well as tailoring to Western tastes.
Japanese food outside of Japan is rarely authentic. In fact it's just weird most of the time. Like the read about it in a book but have no idea what it actually tastes like.
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I'm lucky to have a Iocal Izakya within walking distance of where I live, run by Japanese people and with notably genuine Japanese food. They also have a bunch of westernized Japanese food (Ugh California rolls) but no one is forcing me to eat that.
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I understand Chinese food in China is also very different from what Chinese restaurants selling North America.
"Chinese food" in North America is really Cantonese, and it's generally fairly close to correct. Other regions in China have much different food, though. It's like selling cheese steak sandwiches and calling it "American food".
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I went to a Taiwanese restaurant during a conference in Vancouver one time, and it was considerably different than anything I'd ever had in a Chinese restaurant I'd ever had before. Apart from the fact that there was literally no English on the menu at all, and just pictures of the dish, it was really an entirely different kind of food. Some things I wouldn't touch at all, but all in all it was very good.
I had a genuine Italian pizza in Vancouver as well at an Italian restaurant with a genuine kiln. My budd
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Depends where you live. Growing up in Silicon Valley, we've had good authentic Chinese food my whole life. And restaurants often add a line under their sign to clarify that it's Cantonese, Hunan, Szichuan, etc. People around here know perfectly well it's not all the same.
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Pizza, as its been popularized around the world, is really an American food.
I would dispute the validity of "around the world".
Americans are particularly good with branding/marketing/industrial chains. At a superficial level, advertisement exposure bias makes it seem that 1) all American things come from chains and 2) all pizza is American. From what we read in this thread, it seems this line of thought works well in Asia (where presumably did not have much Italian immigration, and where pizza was introduced by fast food brands of American origin). But I would say it does not work
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Pizza, as its been popularized around the world, is really an American food.
Depends mostly on what level of foreign influence is on a country. You say "around the world" but the reality is it is a complete mix. In many places of the world you order a pizza you will get an italian style pizza, especially places with strong European roots.
If your definition of "around the world" is any place which has a Pizza Hut then sure, but that won't be the only style of pizza you get in most places.
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not enough american tourists to keep the brand afloat? maybe americans are a bit more daring when it comes to pizza. but coffee? hell naw. every starbucks location i've been to, outside the US, always have a few americans at all times.
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not enough american tourists to keep the brand afloat? maybe americans are a bit more daring when it comes to pizza. but coffee? hell naw. every starbucks location i've been to, outside the US, always have a few americans at all times.
We couldn't find a Starbucks in Italy but no problem, every corner cafe had a huge espresso machine and people who knew how to use it to produce better coffee than Starbucks. I can't imagine them doing well anywhere outside the tourist places.
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The weird thing is that Dominos is so dramatically different than any pizza you'd find in Italy, the two styles of pie would never be in competition with each other. So I would have expected it to be favored by Italians eating something out of the ordinary for them, versus Americans being daft enough to travel to... well... anywhere in the Mediterranean and eat food they could just get at home.
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Some tourists do, though. There are people to travel to places like Italy and France, and look for the double arches. I'm not a big foodie, and do look my comfort foods. But if I was in Italy, I'd want to breathe in the local cuisine. I'm not flying across an ocean just to hunt down the North American fast food outlets.
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It's not just Americans. I know people from Japan who were hesitant to try any non-Japanese food, or there would be one who would eat anything but the spouse was picky. Also recently a guy from India who I was worried would starve because he really didn't like anything that wasn't Indian, even when I would tell him it was purely vegetarian he'd just poke at it with the fork.
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I'm remembering a story I heard about US kids being deported to Mexico and then hanging out at the Taco Bell in Mexico City because it had the food they liked :-)
Re:Italians like pizza (Score:4, Insightful)
I tried a Dominos pizza once. Never again. Not when there's real pizza out there.
(ditto Pizza Hut)
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Have you tried it in the last 10 years? Dominos has really reinvented themselves. No longer the Dominos Death Discs of the past.
Pizza Hut, on the other hand, has gone seriously downhill. Nasty things as bad as Dominos used to be.
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Pizza Hut's Supreme Pan pizza is great. It may not be what people consider "pizza", but it's a great combination of a deep dish pizza which doesn't have a rock hard curst combined with a good amount of toppings.
If I had to eat only one pizza for the rest of my life (not every day), that would be it.
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I think you're missing its appeal, it is typically less than half the price of what I would personally call good pizza, at least where I live.
Carbs, a bunch of cheese, some salty sauce, a modest amount of meat and veggies. I wouldnt call it good pizza but there's no reason it cant be enjoyed as the modest meal that it is.
Re:Italians like pizza (Score:4)
with the U.S. brand touting pizza toppings that included pineapple and barbecue chicken, an unusual take in a country more accustomed to thin-crust margheritas
What it is that they make is "American pizza." Which is Italian-American in origin. What they should have done is given it a different name than "pizza" in Italy. It's fast food, it would be popular as that.
According to the article, they were also one of the only pizza places that delivered (before the pandemic). Which is really surprising considering the culture of pizza being a delivery business elsewhere.
Re:Italians like pizza (Score:5, Interesting)
More specifically, Dominos is a fast food implementation of a Michigan-style derivative of New York's immigrant-created modification of an Italian pie.
New York Italian food is quite distinctive from Italy Italian. This should surprise no one, considering the differing climates, agriculture, and the fact that Italy is a peninsula surrounded on three sides by excellent seafood, which is one thing that New York is generally lacking. And yes, that does very much apply to the pizza.
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Nobody with a functioning palate or intact digestive tract does. Even the delivery guys look like reassembled and reanimated corpses left over from the necromantic production of Domino's "pepperoni".
My observation (Score:5, Interesting)
When Dominos entered Italy, their edge was delivery. Most existing pizza places in Italy did not deliver.
COVID changed everything. Lots of places began to deliver to stay in business.
So, why would you eat crap Dominos' pizza?
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Why would you eat greasy, doughy crap instead of real pizza? Indeed...
In my country, I know of one Domino's. I have never ever seen anyone eat there, and I can't remember anyone ever ordering from there that I know. I have exactly no idea how they stay in business.
There's literally a pizza/noodle/kebab combo restaurant every 100 yards. And yes, all of them are owned by Turkish people. Except the kebab-only booths, those are Kurds.
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I have exactly no idea how they stay in business.
It's really a money-laundering operation?
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That's how they broke into the American market as well. I think they were the first substantial nationwide food chain to offer delivery and advertise it. In fact, I think that's how they *became* a nationwide chain: I think delivery was their main schtick from very early on in the history of the chain. As they grew, increasingly large numbers of other pizza places found it worthwhile to offer delivery as well, in order to stay competitive, because
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It's less than half the price of better pizza?
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It's less than half the price of better pizza?
If you live life exclusively by a price tag then that must be truly miserable. But even if you did, you probably wouldn't go out and buy dominos frequently as takeaway pizza is none the less incredibly expensive compared to cooking something at home.
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If you live life exclusively by a price tag then that must be truly miserable
I take it you had a privileged life and were never young and broke then. I know this might be hard to accept then but broke people like the convenience of having their food made for them too.
But even if you did, you probably wouldn't go out and buy dominos frequently as takeaway pizza is none the less incredibly expensive compared to cooking something at home.
Dominoes more expensive than making your own pizza!? You either don't make your own pizza or don't have any idea how much a Dominoes pizza costs. My local dominoes advertises 7.99 large multi topping pizzas and I live in California where everything is expensive.
7.99 is about what it costs me to make my own pizza (assumi
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Ugh, "Dominos".
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In the here-and-now they've also done a very good job of embracing technology, and their app is quite good for ordering exactly what you want and keeping you apprised of your order's status and ETA. It's nothing I'd buy to eat if I had the time, inclination, and option of going out. But the closest real pizza place to my house is a 20-minute walk each way. So, if you're not sober enough to drive, potentially not sober enough to walk, and don't want to carry your pie home for 20 minutes through the cold n
There is one Taco Bell left in Mexico (Score:4, Funny)
Americanized food doesn't work in most home countries.
But I hear the Japanese love them some KFC
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Americanized food doesn't work in most home countries.
But I hear the Japanese love them some KFC
Not just the Japanese. American fast food brands are so popular across Asia that a lot of brands that are long-dead in the United States... Kenny Rogers Roasters, Shakey's Pizza, etc... keep thriving in Asian countries. I'm beginning to think Indonesia is Fast Food Heaven, because that's where American fast food brands go when they die here.
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Well, we do love your burger joints. McD and KFC are very popular.
Re: There is one Taco Bell left in Mexico (Score:2)
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It didn't stop Starbucks from being successful in Paris. It took a while before getting there, Paris is well known for its cafes, and Starbucks thought they couldn't compete, the could.
Domino's is also present in southeastern France, even though Italian style pizza being the most popular there, due in part to its proximity to Italy.
And in the early days, McDonald's didn't even want to go to France, because fast foot seemed at odds with French idea of eating, with its world famous cuisine, two hour lunch bre
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Well that just isnt true. McDonalds, KFC, Starbucks, and even Dominos outside of Italy all have huge global presences.
What I cant figure out is why foreigners keep eating our worst food.
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Shit, you said "home" countries. My apologies, I read your post too quickly.
Italy is not a place to sell pizza (Score:2, Interesting)
But the problem with something that has roots in Italian heritage, but isn't, is that you run the risk of pissing off the majority if your customer base simply because Italy is not a country by design but is in fact a country of convenience. Italians banded together
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P.S.: pasta "Alfredo" is a prank for tourists. Nobody calls it that way in Italy outside of tourist restaurants or hipster chefs looking for recognition abroad.
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So what is Alfredo sauce called in Italy? (Genuinely asking.)
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Gotcha, so it's not a prank at all. It's just a simplified name for tourists that they might be more familiar with because of the popularity of Italian American food in other countries.
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"Royale with cheese"? https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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So there isnt significant regional variation in Italian Pizza? A quick Google search seems to suggest that the internet agrees with the person you're responding to at least in regards to pizza https://www.eataly.com/us_en/m... [eataly.com] .
To be honest this just stands to reason as well, most popular foods with long histories have regional variances in their country of origin. We didnt even invent pizza and we have strong regional variants of it even here in the US, likely due to the large number of Italians who have c
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it's just bread and sauce and olive oil
Firstly, "bread" is a way to describe American pizza. Italian pizza dough isn't even remotely close to anything like bread.
Secondly, if you think it's sauce and olive oil then you've clearly never eaten a pizza in Italy. Even the crappiest pizza places have menu diversity that easily puts Domino's selection to shame. In fact even the simplest Italian pizza has more than those three ingredients (you're missing cheese to make a margherita pizza to say nothing of fresh basil).
Tuscany pizza is different than Sicilian pizza is different than Romana pizza is different than Napoli pizza.
Wait I thought you said it's bread
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it's just bread and sauce and olive oil
Wait I thought you said it's bread with 2 ingredients on it. Make up your mind.
It's nice how you cut out my quote, where I literally qualified my opinion as "that's just my opinion". This may be difficult for you to understand but here in America we're entitled to them even if your opinion differs. Some of us can simply accept that it's ok for some people to like something and others to not. But perhaps not where you come from.
In fact, my opinion is that bread isn't all that great overall. I can recognize that there are different types of bread and
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It's nice how you cut out my quote
That's particularly rich coming from you. [slashdot.org]
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Italians banded together because of their shared history, language and culture primarily to oppose the growing nationalism from other countries like France and Germany. But Italy is truly a series of city-states that banded together out of necessity, not desire.
wtf are you on about.
Domino's Death Disc (Score:2)
Domino's death disc is what we (my group of peers) used to refer to Domino's as back in collage in the late 80s. Domino's was on the lower tier of pizza options in terms of cost and quality back then, but as cheap college students, they did get a share of our business. Almost 40 years later my opinion of their quality hasn't improved, and I have much higher pizza standards now, so they don't get my business. I suspect that in Italy, the baseline standards for pizza are much higher than that of American coll
Too Much Competition. (Score:2)
In addition to the other observations as to why Dominoes failed, there are approximately 930 Italians for 1 pizzeria. 59,000,000/63,000
Not sure how Dominoes though they were going to pound the competition.
I was expecting the same with Starbucks (Score:2)
I mean, we're basically the center of "coffee houses", you can't throw a dead cat over your shoulder without hitting a barista, but somehow they survived.
Don't ask me why. Who the hell wants that kind of "coffee" (I use that term very loosely here)? Not only are they hellish expensive but their coffee tastes like shit!
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Hah, I’m an American and I think Starbucks tastes like shit! I don’t even think it’s a minority opinion amongst coffee fans. What Starbucks excels at is milky, sugary, syrupy, caramely candy drinks that have some amount of coffee in them as well. Me, I like simple, and I rarely even drink cappuccino or lattes.
There are some interesting coffee debates. Most high-end non-chain coffeeshops in America today are third-wave. They may have a variety of roasts and a focus on single-origin beans, u
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Maybe for the free WiFi?
I understand completely (Score:4, Interesting)
when I was visitiing China back in the 90s, I was deep in the interior and desperate for something other than misc. grey meat, weak tea and bitter melon
so when I saw an American-esque fast food burger joint, I had to try it; and even tho the pics on the fast-food style menu didn't quite look right, I ordered anyway
unknown meat, 'cheese' was not cheese of anything in my experience (tofu?), and the 'pickle' was just a slice of plain cucumber; no mustard, no ketchup
it's like all they had to go on were pictures of the food, but no actual cooking/tasting experience.... ya know a slice of pickle looks just like a slice of cucumber lol
after tasting it, I'm sure my reaction was similar to how the Italians might react to Dominos pizza.... WTF is this shite?!?!!!
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when I was visitiing China back in the 90s, I was deep in the interior and desperate for something other than misc. grey meat, weak tea and bitter melon
Where the fuck in China were you that you got routinely fed what you described? Prison?
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lol, authentic Chinese food varies greatly over regions and is nothing at all like what we get in the USA.... I repeat, not at all
Taiyuan and Chengdu(?) and metro areas; even went into the countryside a bit, some of it pretty rough by western standards; local bigwigs took time to show us around
I'm pretty sure I/we was the first round eye many had seen in person; nice folks, and everyone wanted to practice their English with us; other than the constant staring, great memories ;-)
the food was tough to get u
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lol, authentic Chinese food varies greatly over regions and is nothing at all like what we get in the USA.... I repeat, not at all
I've been to Shanghai, Beijing, and Hong Kong. I ate at big fancy restaurants and tiny out of the way restaurants. All the food was very similar to what you can find in California.
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I too was at Bejing and Shanghai... food was good there and there was definitely more of a western influence, but you could still find weird stuff from the street vendors; note some of the other places I went to had never or hardly ever seen a non-asian in person... I mean it was far from where most touristy types get to
not only did I see regional differences, the locals said the same; not really different than the idea of our regional foods in the US
How stupid can you be? (Score:2)
Who thought it was a good idea to do this? A marketdroid, and the CEO thought it would work?
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Snooty bastids. lol (Score:2)
Dominoâ(TM)s (Score:1)
Pizza (Score:1)