Standards: we’re not chefs — we’re food technologists

Few people can make consistently good pizza. In most pizzerias, the quality of the dough, ingredients, and service depends entirely on the skill of the staff. There’s no guarantee that if you walk into a familiar pizzeria in an unfamiliar city, you’ll get the same quality. Pizza is a gamble.

We’ve created a system that helps us make consistently delicious pizza with fresh dough in 12 minutes. Instead of relying on talent and skill, we rely on standards. Quality control is built into every step of the process.

To ensure that the pizzas taste just as delicious in every pizzeria, we’ve developed a universal system for describing recipes and measuring ingredients. Every step is clearly laid out, ingredients are strictly measured, and the process doesn’t take much time — even for novice pizza makers. This is how we achieve consistent quality across all our pizzerias.

We’ve developed formulas — a recipe system that’s easy to teach to any beginner. All the recipe formulas are always right in front of you. Here’s what the production line looks like in every pizzeria:

We have compiled a comprehensive knowledge base covering every aspect of running a pizzeria: kitchen organization, cleaning, food prep, baking, customer service, and staff management. The knowledge base contains all working documents and templates for promotional materials. Here’s what the standards for vegetable prep and pizza making look like:

The knowledge base is hosted on a private website accessible to all franchisees. Each standard is a web page that can be opened at any time to review the correct procedures and updated from a single location across all pizzerias. Here are some of the standards included in our database, which contains over 300 documents:

The franchisee knowledge base is not just a guide to running a pizzeria, but also a platform for sharing experiences. We celebrate each other’s successes, refine our systems, and improve our standards every week.

Before launching a Dodo pizzeria, Dodo invites franchisees to its training center in Moscow for 15 days. During this time, franchisees learn the basics of entrepreneurship, develop a business plan, learn how to create a financial model and sales plan, simulate business scenarios, and become competent pizzeria managers.

The two-week training is a full immersion experience with no distractions. In 15 days at the training center, a partner achieves more than they would in six months at home.

However, business knowledge alone is not enough. To manage a pizzeria, you need to know it from the inside out and understand every detail. That’s why, in addition to lectures, the franchisee begins working in the training kitchen. Here, they master the entire operational cycle of a pizzeria: from washing dishes to late-night deliveries.

After that, the franchisee and their managers train their own staff, and the management company additionally provides access to online training.

To see how this works, watch the video or read the article about how training the restaurant team helps the business grow in Business Secrets:

We aren’t chefs — we’re technologists. We’ve developed a system that ensures every one of our employees can make a great pizza, and that our pizzerias are pleasant places to visit in any city. And Dodo knows how to share this system with our partners. Dodo’s strength lies in our systems and expertise.