All right, good afternoon. Thank you very much for being here today. I am Danilo Gargiulo, Restaurant Analyst here at Bernstein, and we are very thrilled to have Domino's here at the Strategic Decisions Conference this year. Domino's is the largest pizza company in the world. They have more than 20,500 locations in over 90 markets. They're generating more than $18 billion in global sales, and that is an increase of more than 80% and over 400% total shareholder returns since 2015. With me today, we have Russell Weiner, CEO of Domino's, and Greg Lemenchick, VP of IR. Now, Russell has served as the Domino's CEO since May 2022, and then prior to that, he was the CEO and President of Domino's U.S. from July 2020 until April 2022, during which he was overseeing Domino's US business in addition to the Global Center of Excellence. Prior to becoming the COO, Russell served as the President of Domino's USA from October 2014 to July 2018, after joining the company as an executive VP, Chief Marketing Officer in 2008. Making me sound old. Well, experienced is the right word. Okay, there you go. there you go. Okay. Okay. Um- All sounds better in Italian. Before I start with some question and answer, I just wanna remind everybody that you can submit your questions through Pigeonhole by either scanning the QR code that is shown on your agenda or by visiting pigeonhole.at with passcode SDC 2024. I'm gonna try to slot in these questions as I go through our kind of prepared questions as well. So maybe the first question, Russell, this is the first time you're here as a CEO. Can you tell us the biggest learning that you've had so far being a CEO of Domino's? You know, the thing about when you join Domino's is you're either a Dominoite for life or you're not. And so I guess my mom likes the title, but I just really consider myself the same person, which is, you know, I work with amazing people in the leadership team, in our stores all around the world, and I have the privilege of working with them on this great brand. And so, yeah, to me, it's the job is similar than before, which is, you know, drive the business, keep the morale where it needs to be. So it's not that different. It's a privilege, but it's not that different. What is the most exciting part for you in the business right now? Yeah, the most exciting... Look, I've been here a long time, so for those, you know, we talked about, I started in 2008 at Domino's as our head of marketing. And the stock at that point, November of 2008, was about $3. And we did a big pizza turnaround at that point, and we invested a lot in digital, and, you know, we are where we are today. So it's been a crazy ride, a wild ride. But the last, you know, call it 2022 and 2023, were not Domino's years, at least as far as I'm concerned, with our performance and, you know, the stock showed it. What we did was we just took a look at our business, what was going well, and we'll talk about it in a little bit, our carryout business has and continues to be on fire, and what was not going well. We addressed in this new Hungry for MORE strategy that we rolled out in Q4. The cool thing for me, and the, what I'm really proud of, is the results. You know, Q1, which is the first full quarter into the strategy, not only did we have a really positive quarter, but we grew order counts. We grew order counts in every single part of our business, in our delivery business, in our carryout business, against every single socioeconomic demographic as well. And so I'm just proud of the way, y eah, it's been nice to see the stock rebound, but I'm just proud of the turnaround that even more on this one than the first one, because it's been the entire company. The first one was really more of a marketing one. This has been operations and supply chain and, you know, everyone together. So yeah, it's been super satisfying. Yeah, maybe the first one was also some food element as well- Yeah ... which is something that you are elevating again today. So can you talk about how you're shifting the way that you're seeing marketing at Domino's today, and what kind of parallelism you can draw from 2008? Yeah. Well, that's a great question. I mean, in 2008, we did have a problem with our product. You know, the testing showed it, and so yeah, we had a big marketing idea on how to talk about it, but the pizza had to be really good. If you're gonna tell people that the old pizza is not good and the new pizza is better, it really has to taste good. Today, what we're dealing with, and this is in our Hungry for MORE strategy, the M stands for Most Delicious Food. And the difference between now and 2008, in 2008, we did not have the most delicious food. Today, we have the most delicious food, but people don't think of us for that, and so we need to go about changing it. We can change it in a few ways. One is the way we depict it, and so if... You'll be seeing more and more Domino's advertising, you're gonna see a brand-new website, you know, coming out in 2025. And we're stepping it up a notch. We're not changing... So very, really clear, we're not changing the product. The product still scores amazing. It's a great product, but we can romance it more. And there's a lot of - it's not surprising, I'm sure at some point we're gonna talk about value. And no matter where you look in the restaurant business, folks do really well on value or they do well on taste perception. It's really hard to do well on both. But with Hungry for MORE, we know we're doing well on value. We're gonna continue. The R in Hungry for MORE stands for Renowned Value. But this is us saying, "Hey, you know what? What's good if the pizza tastes great, but people don't know that?" You got a lot of work to do. That's the big difference. We don't have to change the product, we just have to talk about it and show it differently. We need to innovate more. You know, one of the things that I know I come to these a lot, and in the past people say, "Well, why do you do innovation?" I was not big into product innovation in the past, frankly, because a lot of what we sell are plain pepperoni, cheese, sausage, pizzas. And every time you launch something, one is the idea has to be great. So how many great ideas can you have a year? We all like to think we have great ideas, but, you know, how many great ideas are there? My wife doesn't. Well, well, my wife thinks all my ideas are bad. And but also, and this is all of QSR, think of the turnover at a restaurant, and if you're launching a brand-new product every month or every quarter, with the turnover you have, the quality of that base product isn't gonna be good. But also the quality of the pepperoni pizza you're making every day that has to be great isn't great because they're concentrating on making this new thing. And so I've purposely kept us, even as CMO, away from new products. And a lot of the tech stuff that you see, we're known a lot for our technology, a lot of the consumer-facing technology is how we've innovated. Well, when this research came back, we looked at it, we said: "Hey, you know what? We're not innovating enough. So not only do we need to show our product better, but we've now committed to two product innovations a year. We've got our first one appropriately named after this meeting, that's the New York Style Pizza. The next one is gonna be the Bernstein-style pizza. Well, yeah, that's right. Exactly, exactly. And so we're gonna have at least two products a year, and with that, when you do products like that, it's not one after the other, they can have strategic intent. So what's the strategic intent behind the New York Style Pizza? It's while people, you know, now we're the number one pizza company in the world, people love Domino's Pizza, not everyone does. And the folks who don't, we did a lot of research, the folks who don't think our dough is, it's a little bit too thick, and they want a thinner New York Style Pizza. And so we launched this pizza. It's, it's - we think it's gonna be incremental because it's going after different customers. And what it's not, it's not a limited time offer. It's gonna stay on the menu, because if an idea is big enough, it should be able to stay on the menu. And I'm really proud. Since I've been with the company, I think only two products we've launched are now off the menu. And so when we launch things, we launch them with strategic intent, and they stay on. Because if they're good enough to be launched on the menu, shouldn't they be good enough to stay? And so anyway, that's how we've evolved a little bit on product. Can you maybe talk about the trade-offs between the operational complexity of adding new platform into the business with incrementality for franchisee profit, and especially the New York Style Pizza seems to be, you know, potentially using just a, you know, lower amount of dough compared to kind of the large size for regular dough for Domino's. So maybe there is also some incrementality in, kind of, in profitability for franchisees. So can you help us understand, from a platform introduction standpoint- Yes ... how do you manage complexity with, you know, driving interest and traffic? Yeah, no, that's a great, that's a great point. We innovate for incrementality. I'm sure at some point, you know, value is the big word, you know, at this conference, we'll be talking value at some point. The best way to raise price is not to raise price, it's to give people something that they want to pay for, and then they choose to pay more, versus you telling them they need to pay more. And so over time, what we've done year after year is introduce different platforms. So we introduced sandwiches in 2008, we did pasta in 2009, and, and we have desserts, and breads, and all these other things. And what we find is, we just add them to our promotional core offer, this Mix & Match offer. It used to be we had an offer, it was $5.99 for any two of these things. For 12 years we had it, we just changed it to $6.99. So, so we've been very consistent with any of these things on our menu, either $5 or now, now, now $6.99. What happens when we introduce a new platform is, instead of charging people more money, they decide: "Oh, I want to add this item. Mm-hmm. And so that lets us drive ticket without charging more. Does that make sense? And when people pay more because they want to pay more, because versus you're charging them more, it's just very different. Now, you're right, with New York Style Pizza, when you get a large New York Style Pizza, it's a medium dough ball stretched to a large. So if there's any cannibalization of a large pizza, it's actually, it's margin accretive. And so that's how we think about innovation in general. Not only does it need to be to do well, but it needs to be accretive profitably, and we do it through these different platforms. Okay. And maybe before we move into some of the macro questions that you were highlighting, you know, just, just thinking about your long-term algorithm, and if you were to reflect on your long-term algorithm today, given the evolving landscape that we are seeing, which parts of your long-term algorithm do you feel most confident in for 2024 and maybe 2025? And which other items of your algorithm are you watching a bit more closely? Yeah, look, we—this is a Long-term Algorithm, and we're really comfortable with all parts of it. And I'll tell you, the only discussions we had before we came out with a new one, and we did it at Investor Day in December of last year, we used to have ranges. And what you... Look, we're, like you said, we're almost $20 billion. When you have a range of 3-4 points, like I said, that's a big difference. It's hard to model on, it's hard to keep people focused on, and all that stuff. And I think, too, is it gives people excuses. Mm. So for example, if I think we can grow 7%, but we're gonna do a little bit of a range, Greg here is probably gonna say: "Hey, Russell, let's say, like, 5%-9%," you know? But what we said is, "No, we're setting a floor," and the global retail sales for us, the floor is 7%. But we're saying it's 7% or more. So we're not giving ourselves an out, and we're not, 7%'s an aggressive number, so 7% over five years is $7 billion. $7 billion is akin to us taking the number 10 restaurant in the United States and adding it to Domino's, and that's, like I said, the floor of the algorithm. Got it. So okay, let's maybe shift on to some more macro questions, and specifically, you know, one of the themes in this conference has been some low-income consumer pressure. So can you help us understand what you're seeing in your data? And more generally, how do you perceive the value orientation to evolve from here on in the rest of the industry, even outside of your own system? Yeah. Look, I think we saw it last year. A lot of folks were taking pricing last year. We took pricing on our national offers in 2022, we didn't in 2023, and I had a lot of people asking me, "Well, hey, in you know, inflation's continuing to happen, and why aren't you taking a price?" And well, two reasons. One is we always make our decisions through some really complex testing that we do. And so we test our pricing, other pricing, but we also understand kind of what's going on in the macro environment. And the thing with inflation, it doesn't-- it rarely goes negative. And so all these customers, you know, inflation may be going up, but it's never gonna go... Prices are never gonna go back to where they were. And so it was clear that we were gonna get to a point where, things were just too expensive. And it's not just, you know, we're, we're here, we're talking about, restaurant. I, I read in, in the journal a couple of days ago, just how, store brands, kind of private label brands, I think, are about 20% of purchases now in, in, in grocery. And so it's not just restaurants that are seeing that. And so it became clear that pricing was going to be an issue, and so we, we purposely didn't take price last year or this year. Now, you might say, "Well, okay, good, you're of, you're a value to customers. That's great. Order count's positive. That's great. But you didn't take pricing. What about your profitability?" And profitability this year is gonna be up. It'd probably be, you know, $170,000 or above. And that's because it's great to make a lot of quarters versus one or two dollars. And so by pricing where we are, it's priced for volume, and so there's gonna be a lot of volume going through the store at still good cash margins, which add up to best-in-class profitability. It costs about $400,000 to build a Domino's. You're making on average $170,000 a year without incentives. That's a great. And that number's up versus last year. And so I think as an operator, it's important to understand, and we tell this to our franchisees, maybe this is an easier way to think about it, is, we focus on franchisee profitability. We feel like if the franchisees are profitable, that's the engine that grows Domino's. But what we tell our franchisees is they need to focus on customer profitability, meaning what kind of disposable income do people have? And customers won't like you to take advantage of them. You can put a price in, but they're very gonna quickly tell you if that's too expensive. And so they understand that. And so we're priced for volume, and volume at the prices we have can still result in more profit, and that's the way, that's the way we've been running this business since, you know, 2009. Are you seeing any signs of low-income consumer pressure in your business today? We're seeing it not in our business. So in our business, and this is one of the things I'm really proud of, you know, not only are we growing order count in delivery and carryout, but all income brackets. So even lower-income consumers, we're growing orders. We're growing orders. That's not happening, obviously, in the broader QSR industry, but I think that's part of how we set ourselves up, not only through pricing, but one of the other pieces that we did under the renowned value, the R of our MORE, is we launched our loyalty program, and that was it, that's been a... and will continue to be a big driver for us. And we looked at how we can improve it. I don't know about you, whenever I get the letter from the marketing person or the CEO of a company where I'm a loyalty member, they always say, "Oh, we have a new and improved loyalty program." What that means is they made it worse, right? You get the new program, all of a sudden, you get the free ticket. "No, I don't get the free ticket anymore." The coolest thing about us is, and this was done, the research, this was not us deciding to be, you know, extra nice. The research actually showed us that that we could give more benefits to customers, and because of the volume and the ticket that would come out of it, our franchisees would make more money. So here's what's happening. We took our old loyalty program. You had to spend $10 to get points. Our carryout offer, and carryout is now 52% of our business, our orders. Our best carryout deal is $7.99. So if you're buying a carryout deal from Domino's with the loyalty program, you're not getting points. New program, $5, you're getting points. Old program, you had to buy six times to get a pizza free. The new program, you get something free starting at two items. Well, so that sounds great for a consumer. How on earth could our franchisees be making money? Well, two things: One is, you now have more loyalty amongst your carryout customers, and hopefully, if not, I'm gonna ask- have him ask me a question on our carryout business at some point, because it's on fire. You know, it's all a beautiful cycle. And then our lower-frequency customers because now they can get something free at two items, they say to themselves, "Oh, well, I don't have to wait around for six. Maybe I'll buy Domino's." And here's the beauty of it: when they get the free item after two purchases, it's usually a side, which means they buy a center plate item, like a pizza. So actually, the ticket is much higher than when we give them a free pizza and they order the side. And so when you jumble all that together, the frequency, the ticket increase, and all that, it's actually a win-win for customers and for franchisees. And so that's been addition to— If you think about it, our pricing and our renowned value, that I'll talk about in two seconds, get you into a flywheel now that is this, loyalty program that is stickier than ever. Mm-hmm. And when I talk about renowned value, I look, I think we're about to be hit with a slew of price promotions from restaurants. I mean, everyone, everyone's talking about it. And I personally, you know, as a former marketer, I think when you do price off, it essentially tells people we've been charging you too much money. And so that's what customers come away with, and that's why we've only changed our national offer twice from $5.99. $5.99 was here for 12 years, and I expect $6.99 to be here for a while. But while everyone's gonna be screaming, "This dollar, that dollar, this dollar, that dollar," we took a step back and said, "Okay, our pricing is right. How can we tap into the broader zeitgeist of, like, the broader thinking of what's going on in America right now?" And what's going on is people just... They think they're being ripped off. Mm. You know, I was telling Greg, I bought ChapStick the other day because I wanna look good. I want my lips to look good for this, you know, this session. So I'm at the convenience store, and I put my credit card in, and for the ChapStick, it said, "Do you want to tip 10%, 15%, 20%?" For ChapStick! And that's happening everywhere now. And so what do we do with that idea? We said, "You know what? People are getting frustrated. They may not be buying whether it's the Domino's they want or the chocolate chip cookie they want or whatever they want because they feel..." By the way, I couldn't figure out how to not tip. Yeah. It was 10, 15, 20. There was no zero in there. And so we said, "Yeah, a lot of people are doing this." So let's take a really, a known mechanism, which is, I'll call it a bounce back. If you buy something, you get $3 on your future purchase. We took that mechanism, and we're calling it You Tip, We Tip. Because of all this tipping going on, we understand it's tough, so if you tip our drivers, we're gonna tip you back. That tip is $3 on your next purchase. And oh, by the way, because of the time you have to purchase it, it's probably gonna be an incremental purchase that you're gonna add ticket onto. It turns out to be great for us. All it is is a bounce back coupon. There's nothing sexy about a bounce back coupon. There's a lot of. Hopefully, this works. I like to say we're trying to bring talk into value, talk value, not just value, not just price. So people are talking about You Tip, We Tip. Last year, we had something called Emergency Pizza. Emergency Pizza was around because people were saying, "Hey, you know what? Maybe I burnt dinner tonight, maybe I got a soccer game, or maybe I just went to the ATM and don't have enough money." "And so whenever I need a..." We wanted people to know that we were there for them, and so we created a promotion. You buy a pizza. You get an Emergency Pizza. All it is, is a buy one, get one free, except it's better because the Emergency Pizza, you don't get right away, so you have to come back and buy it. When you buy it, there's a ticket with it, and with our new loyalty program, you've gotten your first pizza. The second pizza is your Emergency Pizza. All of a sudden, now you can get a free item with the loyalty program. And that's what I'm really excited about. If you take anything away from renown, the difference between value and renowned value is a buy one, get one free versus Emergency Pizza, and we're just tapping into these tensions that I think the talk value is really big. So sorry, I get really excited about it. No, no, no. I mean, clearly, it's a great topic of conversation, and it seems like you're deploying some extra levers for Domino's to be able to be well-positioned in a, you know, increasing competitive environment. But I'm wondering if you're gonna be seeing any sort of pressure, incremental pressures as you know, some of the maybe independent pizza players or some of the larger chains might become a little bit more promotional, as you mentioned before. But even outside of the pizza way from home, you know, there has been greater value being promoted these days. So how do you think this environment is going to be playing out for you? So are you expecting to see kind of a lower share of consumption in pizza because of the greater value that you might be getting from the burger or chicken category, or what's your thinking? Yeah, well, one is I fully expect folks to lean more into value. But, you know, when I look over my 16 years at Domino's, what hasn't changed is the pizza category is a big category, but it doesn't grow a lot. It kind of grows with population. But what we've done is we've been an equal opportunity share stealer. And so if you look back to 2015, over that time period, we're up 9.4 share points. We took three share points from our big three national competitors, three from the local, and three from, you know, regional. And so we've really taken from everyone. Certainly, we compete in the broader QSR business, but at the end of the day, we're in the pizza business, and we don't even sell one out of every four pizzas. When you think about a $500 million marketing budget, when you think about we're the number one, you know, brand in pizza, we've got the scale and purchasing power. No matter what folks do within this category to bring more price or more value, one is we've always been the leader. So we started with $5.99, people came. So whether—let's just say if somebody does something, you know, we have the ability to go in there and, you know, outmuscle, to be honest. So we've had all this share growth, but 40%-50% of the pizza category is still regionals and kind of up and down the street places. What makes me super excited about the future of Domino's? We can talk about how we're gonna do it, but the future of Domino's is we're the number one player. How many number one players are here at this conference who have a 25 share of a category? A little bit less than 25 share of a category, right? We just had double that. We're number one, and we're in a place where 40%-50% are still these kind of smaller companies. We've shown that we've, over time, grown share from all of them. I think no matter what folks do within this environment, history shows and just fair share in the industry shows that we're gonna succeed. Good. What's your expectations in terms of going forward? You know, are you still gonna be like a equal opportunity share stealer, or are you expecting to see different dynamics in the industry going forward? For me. Oh, for me? Yeah. Can you not hear me? I hear you. Oh, okay. My wife always tells me I'm too loud. Now I got two microphones. I'm gonna need you to write her a note that says I was too, too soft-spoken. So I'm sorry. I just... I got one more time on the question. The question is, are you expecting to be an equal opportunity- No ... share stealer going forward, or are you expecting the dynamic of market share gains to be evolving, compared to the past? No, I really do think we'll be an equal opportunity share stealer. Because the one thing that has kept us from doing that, we changed, you know, in the middle of last year when we decided to sign the agreement with Uber and get into the aggregator business. I think, you know, we're obviously we're taking orders from them. We still deliver it ourselves, and that's really important. Be happy to talk about that. But that business for us, net of what we think cannibalization is gonna be, is $1 billion, once we're on all of these platforms. That is where I think the up-and-down the street folks who previously didn't have an online ordering system, they didn't have a way to deliver, when we were not on that, I think that really helped them. Mm-hmm. Now we're there, and I think what wins on those platforms is stuff that we're good at. I mean, we're best in class on digital media buying, and obviously, we talked about value before. And so now we're essentially at a marketplace where what wins? Price, brand presence, and so I think, you know, we'll be back now that we're on them, being a stealer from everyone. Plus, our carryout business, a lot of that carryout business also comes from up and down the street. We've more than doubled our carryout share, actually, from 2015 to 2023. I talk all day about our carryout business, but what carryout does is not only lets us take equally, you know, from all these players, but it actually lets us open up more stores. And let me—I don't know how I could explain this without... I usually have a device. I'm gonna show you—yes. Thank you. Not on the camera, right? Okay. Okay. Okay. I can hold it for you if you want. Okay, you hold it. There we go. All right. Let's just say this is a Domino's territory here, and we have a store, like, right over here. In the past, we wouldn't open up another store because the franchisee would be really happy, because he or she would have all these addresses. Why should I give up any of these addresses? Well, a few years ago, we started to realize that, you know what? While everyone's running into this delivery business, and we understand why, and we're in it now too, with aggregators, no one's really talking about carryout. There aren't tech companies spending millions and millions and billions of dollars to get into that business. And so why don't we lean into carryout? Because guess what? It's actually bigger than delivery. And so we start doing more promotions, and carryout grows and grows and grows. And today, actually, 52% of our orders are carryout. Now, why is that important for this? Well, first, carryout and delivery, there's very little overlap, 15%-20% overlap, so the majority of the time, the customer is incremental. Now, let me get you back to the store. So this store that's here, customers who shop carryout like their store to be closer to them, for obvious reasons. So whereas the past, we wouldn't open a store, maybe now we're open up a store over here. And what does that mean? It means, one, a competitor doesn't open up the store, so that helps, but they would've sourced from us. But because of carryout, when we split a store, so this is an existing territory, when we split an existing territory, 80% of the carryout volume is incremental. And so essentially, you're opening up a new store, and it pays for itself, breaks even with carryout. But then, guess what happens? Let's say, you know, Greg's house is in the middle. All of a sudden, the delivery to Greg's house is gonna be faster because we now have two stores. One is closer to his house than the old one. So what happens then is our delivery efficiencies get better, which means the margins get tighter, but also service gets better. We're getting to Greg's house faster because we're closer to Greg's house, and so he orders delivery more. So there's this beautiful cycle where we have this value that takes people into the loyalty program. The loyalty program drives the business. Carryout customers drive incremental stores, and the incremental stores help drive our delivery business, and that's why we think we have so many stores we can open. So here's your pad back. I hopefully you're able to take that away, but it, it really is this carryout growth, aside from the fact that it's just on fire, actually helps open up new stores. So my follow-up on this one is, what triggered the carryout business to be on fire today? I mean, I know that it was a growth and it's a multi-year growth for you, but what was the real change inside your decision-making processes that was enabling consumers to have a better appreciation of the carryout business? And then as a follow-up to that, what's the upper limit in terms of mix that you think your stores can be driving onto carryout? You talked about 52%. Can you get to 70, 80%, and what would that do to profitability of the stores? Yeah. You know, the thing other than just advertising it more, look, as sales go up, you have more money to advertise. So we used to just advertise around delivery, now we advertise carryout. But actually, what's happened as inflation has come is that carryout is becoming a better and better deal because prices are increasing. Mm-hmm. But what happens when you take- Mm. When you do delivery? You know, it's, it's you're paying a tip, you're paying fees and all these kinds of things. So I think part of why carryout's growing is just it's becoming more and more of a relative value for for customers, and I think that's why we're, you know, we're seeing that now. As far as what is the upper limit, you know, it's interesting. Maybe I'll talk to you this way, because part of me doesn't want it to be bigger than 52% because I wanna continue to drive our delivery business, so I want the denominator to be bigger. But I guess I throw it to you this way, is if we deliver one out of every three pizzas today, why shouldn't we do one out of every three carryout? Why shouldn't we? And then, you know, when you look outside of aggregators, actually, we deliver 40% of pizzas. Why can't we do 40% carryout? These, to me, are not hard stretches to believe. And so when you... When I see that growth in carryout, I think all it's doing is it's naturally catching up to what our business should be because of how big we are as a pizza company. What would that do to profitability for franchisees? Well, because it's incremental, would be, you know, 15%-20% incremental. It's accretive, right? I mean, there may be more dollars to a delivery order, but if the profit's incremental, it's incremental. And if you think about the labor, you're not using any of your delivery, right? And so think about all those times where maybe, you know, you've got people, lunchtime or before rush, where you have people to have to staff the store. Well, without a carryout business, you got a lot of times people are sitting there doing nothing. And so it also just helps you optimize your labor. Mm-hmm. In the past, you used to say, "Well, we are a tech company that just so happens to be making pizzas," as a clear competitive advantage. What would you say is your, today, your competitive advantage for delivery and for carryout? Well, I think we have evolved in that we're really more a logistics company because it even starts... The one thing we didn't talk about is supply chain, which, you know, we own. Every pizza starts in our supply chain, and unlike other companies, the pizza and the ingredients themselves never leave our hands until they become in your hands as a customer, and I think that's a huge competitive advantage. I think our Hungry for MORE strategy, well, you know, all aspects of it are firing now, and that strategy is strong, and you saw our results and you saw competitor results in Q1, so it's making an impact. And I think probably lastly is just our franchisees. I mean, we have a very special—for those of you who don't know, to be a Domino's franchisee, you need to have worked at a Domino's. So that's really special in that, you know, everyone who runs a Domino's knows what it's like, it's like to work at a Domino's, and then it actually is pretty aspirational, because if you're, if you're a pizza maker at Domino's, you look at your franchisee and you're like: "Wow, he's been a pizza maker." The other part of our system is, you can't have what we call outside business interests. Meaning, you can own, you can own a Domino's, you can own the real estate you're in, but that's it. If you want to invest in the market, that's fine, but you can't buy another concept, as an example. You can't be a car dealer. You can't be a dentist. You're a Domino's. So when you think about the profits we have, we're projecting $170 this year on the build, and you think about what that looks like, it's a great investment, and you really have one place to reinvest those great investments, it's in Domino's Pizza. And so we've got folks who are all in, where the outlet for their profit is to continue to invest in the place that helps them create this great life for themselves and their families. What was their takeaway on your partnership with Uber Eats? So how did franchisees respond to that? And as a follow-up, what was your biggest surprise since your partnership? Clearly, you tested it. Yeah. But now that it's live- Yeah ... what was the biggest learning for you? I think our franchisees, one word: finally. I mean, we were a little slow to the game, but it was purposeful, to be honest. When you look back prior to COVID, we intentionally didn't wanna help grow these aggregators because they were gonna be competitive to us. Now, who knows what would've happened if COVID didn't happen? But it did, they became big, and we need to compete there. It's a marketplace where people go for delivery orders. So our franchisees, you know, we're definitely happy that we did it. And what was the second question? Your biggest learning. Oh, the biggest learning. Well, one was a surprise, one was a learning. The surprise I like to talk about is, because we always talk about how incremental aggregators are gonna be to us. We think they'll be two-thirds incremental. And a great proof point to me, other than just the data, was I got a call from our IT department one day and said: "You know what? We're booting out all these Uber orders." This was during the test. "Why are we booting out? Let me go check on it." Well, it turns out, you know, we have very good safety technology. What our Chief Information Security Officer was telling me was: "Hey, all these so many Uber orders are coming in from phone numbers that are international, that are global." Now, part of our mechanism on security is, if an order comes in with an international phone number, we kick it out because it's fraud. Because Domino's customers are, they're Americans, they're. But there are so many global Uber customers who come to then America, and they wanna order, we had to actually change our algorithm. And that, to me, was like, "Wow! I knew it was gonna be incremental, but this was kinda cool." So that was one cool part. I think the other thing that we've learned is this is really more of a high-low pricing game than an everyday low price. So I'll make up a price. Let's say, you know, the right price should be $20 for a pizza. It's better to charge $25, and again, I'm making up these numbers, and reduce it to $20, because that's the way people shop, they deal shop. And so we went in there originally thinking it would be everyday low price, but it's probably gonna be... Well, it will be this high-low. Important thing to remember is best price and our loyalty program are only domino's.com. So even if this is a, you know, cannibalized order, this will be positive from a margin perspective. So I got out of time. Just for my understanding, are you saying the pricing tactic that you're gonna be deploying on Uber Eats is going to be more of a high-low, which implies maybe starting with a higher price going forward, but discounting a little bit more, ending up at the same price level as of, you know, when you started the trial? Or are you saying that there's going to be some incremental profitability pressure onto that channel? No, it's more the first, and obviously, we're still testing and optimizing, but it's just a different way to get to the same price. That price still being incremental to what we are charging on our own channel. Because we want folks, at the end of the day, we still want them to come to domino's.com. Let's move maybe on to our international markets. Yeah. - because it's a big focus of your, of your growth pillars as well. Can you give us a lay of the land of today, you know, which markets are performing particularly well, which markets are maybe performing a little bit below your, your expectations, and what's the rationale behind it? Yeah. Well, I'll start with maybe the ones below expectations, because I know they're below their expectations. Domino's Pizza Enterprises, which is our master franchisee based in Australia, but there are a bunch of markets around the world. They just had an investor meeting the other day, and they talked about some positive things and how they're, you know, turning around. And part of the way they're turning around Australia is through Hungry for MORE and really driving food deliciousness. So Australia is positive, Germany is positive, but they're, yeah, struggling in some markets, in France and Japan, and they've got plans, and we're gonna help them any way we can. But, it's below. I talk to them all the time, it's below what they expect of themselves. On the positive side, I mean, the unbelievable to see what China is doing for us is absolutely unbelievable. They will end this year, they've already announced this, opening their 1,000th store, store number 1,000 by Q4. And then they actually up their algorithm, so to between 3 and 350 stores every year, starting next year, moving forward. And so that's a really big market for us. I know there's, you know, there's been a bunch of questions about businesses in China. This one, for us, is, it's not feeling any of the heat. It's doing really well. Yi Wang, and who's the CEO, and that team are doing tremendous. India, which, you know, also recently reported, they just increased their store goal, how big they think the market could be, by 1,000 to 4,000. Those two markets alone will be 40%-50% of our growth. So if you know, DPE will continue to still work on what they're working on, obviously, there's still some pressure in the Middle East, which isn't a big part of our portfolio, but it's there. But the strength is in the rest of the portfolio, especially China and India, it's pretty clear. So, how do you, if you combine it together, you know, the puts and takes into these international markets, how confident are you about the unit growth potential for 2024, 2025, even if not beyond? Yeah, I think on the Domino's Pizza Enterprises, Middle East is a little smaller, but Domino's Pizza Enterprises is something we're gonna have to look at, but I feel really confident about the rest of the portfolio. What's different about China for you versus some of the other concepts? I mean, we've been hearing from many other companies that the slowdown in China is compromising their ability to grow, you know, this year. What's different about Domino's in China? Why are you able to increase the expectations on unit growth in China specifically, versus others are suffering a little bit more? You know, one of the best operators, one of the best franchisees we have in the system, she just won the biggest award that you can at Domino's, is Aileen Wang, the CEO of Domino's Pizza China. Before Aileen, we were in China for many years, and you never would've heard me talk about China on this marketplace. We were one of those, on a meeting like this, we were one of those brands who wasn't growing. But she's got an amazing team in place, and they are just they are machines right now. And so we got plenty of years of lack of success in China, and we just have a team that's hitting it on all cylinders right now. So what kind of learnings can you draw instead from maybe not as successful stories in 2023? So for instance, the exit in Italy or the store portfolio reorganization in Brazil. So can you help us- Yeah ... understand the lessons you learned from that one, and how you're gonna be deploying those learnings to essentially accelerate the growth for other international markets? Yeah, I think the biggest learning about when an international market doesn't work for us, is the partner wasn't right. Mm. I'm not gonna blame it on the partner. Sometimes it's the partnership, we're 50% of the partnership. Not a legal partnership, my lawyer would want me to say, but, you know, franchise partnership. Getting the right... The China example is a great example. Years of, of growth within China weren't happening until we got the right, you know, leader. And so the, the partner needs to be right, and they need to be in it for the long term, because Domino's is not a short-term, you know, business. We just had a rally with 9,000 people from around the world, and the energy in that place was electric, and you don't feed off that electricity if you're only in there for a few years. So being in there for a long time is really important. I think the second thing is making sure store growth is done in a more scientific way, like we do it in the States, and we're trying to kind of share that. Making sure when you split a store, it's the right time to split a store. If you go to a new geography, is it too early? You know, this is not about planting flags. One of the things we learned is fortressing a market works. So when you think of a market like China, how big it is, do you open stores all over the country, or do you stay where you are, start to fortress that, and then go to a second city? And that's really what we're doing in city by city, you know. And so those are probably the two pieces: getting the right partner, and making sure the development strategy is sound and backed by data and not too fast. We haven't talked about, you know, the operations in the store, which I know is a clear focus as part of your MORE strategy. But maybe let's combine that question with tech advancements, right? And the fact that you've been pioneering the technological improvements in the restaurant space. So maybe can you give me your view on the top three AI applications that you're expecting Domino's to eventually adopt? Yeah, I think, you know, what I'll do is, AI, machine learning, all this stuff is a spectrum. And so maybe I'll talk about some of the things we're doing now, and then some of the things that are more into, as you think about, you know, the Microsoft relationship, what's coming in the future. So some of the things we're doing now is, we make pizzas before people order them. You start your order online, at some point, our algorithm figures out you're ready to order, and we start making it. We will bring it out to... Our delivery driver used to have to find a spot, park the car, come in, get the pizza. We now, because of GPS, we know where the pizza is, and we run it out to them. And so that means we're making your pizza sooner. It means we're bringing it out to the delivery driver quicker. It means more run for them, more tips. It means faster delivery for you, and that brings people back. And so, you know, that's not the most sophisticated, you know, futuristic, Star Trek-like algorithm, but man, is that helping the business right now. At some point, we're gonna get to the point where, you know, we'll be doing more just-in-time pizza making, where, you know, the computer may be smart enough to say, "Hey, you know what? We don't have enough delivery drivers now. Let's not actually make those pizzas because they'll just be cold. Let's actually call up more delivery drivers to then handle that volume." And so instead of a manager having to make those decisions him or herself, the computer will start to so you won't even see the order if you're not supposed to make the order, because at the end of the day, our job is to make sure the product gets to the customer on time and nice and hot. Mm-hmm. That's probably kind of a level two. And then, you know, level three is, I think, some of the stuff that you're talking about. So we're working with Microsoft now, in really two areas. One is on the consumer side, and so when you're on the website, what can you—how can we make that ordering experience better? Think of it as almost like a pizza concierge and how that would work, and I've started to see some stuff the team is doing, which is fabulous. So you'll be seeing that later on this year. And, you know, the other piece is back of house. When you think about some of the common problems folks have in back of house, how do they figure out the solutions to them? You know, do they go through the training manual? Do they call the phone number up, or do they use this Copilot technology to figure it out on the fly without incident? And that's what we're working on with Microsoft. Among the many levers that we touched on today of your MORE strategy, which one is the one that you think is gonna deliver the most immediate impact for your business in 2024, and which one do you think is gonna have multi-year impact, and which one you think is going to be just a longer term solution for Domino's? Yeah, clearly, the shortest term one is the R, the renowned value, and we're seeing it now with the loyalty program, with Uber will eventually be, you know, the other competition there, with our pricing. But really long term, I mean, the beauty of this strategy, because the E is about enhanced by our franchisees. So essentially, we're telling our system, we gotta do three things: We gotta drive food deliciousness, we gotta make sure operationally we can deliver it, and we need to deliver value. And so there's there doesn't have to be a choice between the three of them, and they're all independent on each other. They're all dependent on each other. If we're telling people we're gonna deliver delicious food, we're talking about that on air, well, then the O helps us deliver it, so we have to do all three of them. I get it. But the R is short term. What about the aggregators itself? Are you still on track to potentially adding another aggregator when the Uber Eats exclusivity expires at the end of the year? Yeah, so we went with Uber for a variety of reasons, but one of them was it enabled us to bring a good deal globally to a bunch of our franchisees internationally, who are already on the Uber platform. It's a one-year contract, and after year one, whether or not we renew exclusivity, it's all our decision, and obviously, we'll base that on the numbers. So, you know, we're still in the middle of year one, but eventually, we will be on all those platforms. But the decision on exclusivity after year one is ours. Great. And then I know that I'm right at time, so maybe one final question, Russell: What are the top three takeaways that you would hope that, investors would take with them at the end of this fireside chat? It's all about a Hungry for MORE strategy. It's more sales, more stores, more profit. That's what Hungry for MORE is there to deliver. Hopefully, you understood that, you know, maybe a secret weapon for us is this carryout thing people don't really know much about and how it's driving store growth. And just how realistic, for me, the assumption of fair share growth is in a category that's full of, you know, a bunch of smaller players. Great. Yeah. Russell- Thanks so much, everybody. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thanks, everybody, for joining. Thanks so much.