Our delivery: 30 minutes or your pizza is free!

Dodo Pizza has its own delivery service: a delivery person with a branded insulated bag, a signature smile, and a special branded app in their pocket.

Every order is routed through Dodo IS — our proprietary cloud-based system that connects the website, app, POS, kitchen, and delivery drivers. The system monitors kitchen workload, the number of couriers on duty, current routes, and even traffic conditions, and distributes orders so that average delivery times are minimized and the kitchen and couriers aren’t overloaded.

Inside the pizzeria, the delivery process is organized like an assembly line. The kitchen has a separate workflow for delivery: dough, assembly, oven, slicing, and packaging — each step is handled by a specific person following a set standard. The finished order goes to the heated delivery shelf, where a courier immediately picks it up, marks it in the app, and heads out to the customer. The entire process — from the click in the app to the doorbell ringing — is clearly visible in the Dodo IS system.

From the customer’s perspective, all of this is summed up in one simple promise: 30 minutes or your pizza is free! Everything else is our responsibility. And here’s a video about how we’re improving pizza delivery:

In its home market, Dodo has deliberately chosen not to use food delivery aggregators. This isn’t a rejection of technology, but a choice to maintain control over its product and its relationships with customers.

An aggregator stands between the restaurant and the customer. It takes order data for itself, dictates how you’ll appear in search results, and can change the rules of the game at any moment: raise commissions, push you down the list of restaurants, or charge for promotion. For a traditional restaurant, where the main revenue comes from the dining room, this is unpleasant but tolerable. For Dodo, where delivery is the foundation of its business, this turns into a dependency.

There’s another side to this. When a guest books through an aggregator, they remain the aggregator’s customer, not Dodo’s. We invest in the product, advertising, and branding, but in the end, it’s just a button in someone else’s app that’s branded with our name. Some people, after seeing a Dodo ad, don’t go to our website or app — they go to the aggregator — and stay there. We lose direct contact, loyalty, and the data needed for decision-making.

Over the years, Dodo has proven that it is possible to build our own digital ecosystem — a website, an app, a tracker, and a unified information system — and use them to create the largest player in the delivery market without relying on aggregators. It’s more expensive and complicated at first, but in the long run, it provides independence and predictable economics for both the company and investors.

Only with our own delivery can our pizza experience be uncompromising. The truth is that in new markets, we always partner with aggregators — it’s a good way to boost brand visibility and make ourselves more accessible to people. But we strive to deliver as many orders as possible on our own and to phase out aggregator services as soon as possible. Our delivery is better.

Every Dodo courier carries their workplace in their pocket: a mobile app connected to the Dodo IS. Through it, couriers receive orders, plan routes, and report on their progress.

This app is very smart; it knows how to optimize routes for faster delivery. It usually tells the courier, «Don't wait for the next order»— deliver this one, then come back!" — that’s how smart it is.

In the app, the courier can see:

• A list of active orders with addresses, times, and contents.
• The optimal route, taking into account traffic and delivery zones.
• Time estimates: when to pick up the order to avoid waiting in the kitchen, and what time to arrive at the customer’s location.
• Statuses — «order accepted», «on the way», «delivered» — which both the customer and the manager can see in real time.
• The app’s smart logic handles routine tasks for the courier. They don’t have to guess whether to take another order along the way or finish the current ones first — the system suggests how to ensure customers get their orders on time while keeping deliveries efficient. The manager at the pizzeria uses the same data to see where the courier is, how many orders they have, and whether they’ll make it on time.

For the customer, this translates to one simple thing: they can open the app and see where their pizza is right now and roughly when to expect a knock at the door.

To ensure that its promise of «hot pizza in 30 minutes or your money back» isn’t just empty words, Dodo invests not only in software but also in the physical delivery infrastructure.

One example is insulated bags equipped with induction heating and temperature sensors. The pizzeria has a heating station: the delivery person places the bag on it, and a heating element in the bottom of the bag warms up. After that, the bag maintains the set temperature for twenty to forty minutes, so even in freezing weather, the pizza arrives at the customer’s door hot, not just lukewarm. The bag has separate hot and cold zones, so the pizza and drinks do not interfere with each other.

Built-in sensors allow monitoring how often and correctly the bag is used, whether it is being used by other restaurants, and whether it is being overheated.

Another example is our own electric delivery scooter. Together with our franchise partners and a Russian manufacturer of specialized vehicles, we designed a three-wheeled electric scooter tailored to Dodo’s needs: stable on winter roads, with a range of up to 40−50 kilometers on a single charge, and a top speed of about 40 km/h. The idea is to provide couriers with convenient and safe transportation, and pizzerias with a predictable fleet featuring uniform service standards and charging stations in restaurant courtyards.

You don’t see these kinds of solutions in advertising banners, but they are what distinguish delivery as a service from delivery as a wow factor.