Dodo Pizza strives to bring in $1,700 a day to survive in the American pizza market. Three weeks have passed since Dodo Pizza opened its doors in Oxford and each day they are closer to their goal.
(Photo by: Ariel Cobbert)
Workers knead the pizza dough until ready.
Dodo Pizza was founded in 2011 in Syktyvkar, Russia, where the average temperature in June is 35 degrees Fahrenheit. The company prides itself on innovation. The Russian company made global headlines last year for being the first commercial pizza company to deliver pizzas via drone, an experiment which has since ended.
Management at Dodo Pizza knew they wanted to break into the American market at some point.
According to their website, “Americans don’t like pizza. They love it.”
Alena Tikhova, product and marketing director, said Dodo wanted to open their first American store in a college town. PMQ Pizza Magazine, headquartered in Oxford, was the primary reason the Russian pizza company decided to open their first American branch in Oxford.
“The founder of (PMQ) traveled to Russia a few years ago,” Tikhova said. “He met the founder of our company and was impressed with what we were doing in Russia. He said ‘One day, you need to open your first store in the United States.’”
Tikhova said they initially thought the founder of PMQ was crazy.
“Why would Russian people go to the United States to open a pizza place?” Tikhova said. “The United States has lots of pizza places already, you don’t need one more.”
Tikhova said they sat on the idea of expanding to America for a few years before finally deciding to break into the American pizza market.
(Photo by: Ariel Cobbert)
Workers add toppings to a pizza before sending it in the oven.
Oxford’s quaint charm and youthful atmosphere also played into their expansion decision.
“It’s easy to get word-of-mouth marketing here,” Tikhova said. “We don’t have the marketing budgets like most of the larger chains have, so we can’t just come into a market and invest millions of dollars in marketing. We needed to find a place where we wouldn’t exactly get famous, but people would know who our company is.”
Dodo Pizza places a large emphasis on transparency. Their website contains a feature for customers to track their sales numbers in real time and enter the Dodo Pizza kitchen via a live-stream video feed. Since opening on March 11, Dodo Pizza’s Oxford location has made $24,806.
The Russian pizza chain because they do not allow customers to customize their pizzas, aside from removing two particular ingredients.
“I think in America we often have the mentality of ‘I want things my way when I want it,’” Hunter Land, a Dodo Pizza employee, said. “I thought the [lack of customization] was a rough idea at first, but the way they described it was this. ‘The best phone on the market is iPhones, right?’ At the same time, iPhones are the least customizable phones there are. They come one way, maybe a few different colors but that’s it, and it’s because it’s the best product.”
(Photo by: Ariel Cobbert)
Paul Atrepev finishes off the pizza with cheese before putting it in the oven.
Land said Dodo Pizza views itself very much like the iPhone. They make pizzas strictly by their recipes because they believe it is the best possible product available and there is no reason to change it. The only exception to this rule is red onions and black olives, which can be removed.
(Photo by: Ariel Cobbert)
Paul Atrepev prepares dough for a margherita pizza.
According to Tikhova, if the Oxford experiment fails and they are not able to reach their goals, they will change the way they do business. They are open to changing their customization or marketing strategies, but for now, they are conducting business their way.
“Dodo Pizza will succeed in America,” Tikhova said. “If we fail, we’ll continue to try again and again until something works.”
