Domino’s for Good > Our Food - Food nutrition
FOOD NUTRITION AND INNOVATION
Domino’s has a long-standing commitment to be led by our customers’ taste and dietary preferences while providing desirable products that our customers love. For example, we are on a journey to offer products that are completely free of artificial colours, flavours and preservatives while offering our customers a wider range of products and occasions. We strive to use the freshest, most natural ingredients in our pizzas, sides and desserts. We believe in sourcing the highest quality ingredients that do not require hidden additives such as artificial colours or flavours. Also, we believe that there is no need for preservatives, as our high volume of sales allows us to go through the ingredients in a short period of time, eliminating the need for preservatives.
We are working hard to offer increased transparency about our products’ nutritional ratings in all markets and displaying relevant nutritional information in all in-store and online ordering markets.
We are also reducing allergens in our products and have become one of the first Quick Service Restaurants to offer vegan cheeses, as well as vegan doughs and proteins. We are currently working to introduce new lower-carbon offerings and to harness future food technologies to improve nutrition within the food industry. Thanks to our continuous focus on innovation, we have increased the quality of our food while making it taste even better. These innovations provide our customers with a greater range of options and help us gain an edge over our competitors. In many cases, customers have rewarded our efforts by becoming loyal to these products.
A cleaner menu
In recent years, we have made significant progress in improving the quality of our food while creating delicious products. In 2017, our European team began their journey to achieve a 100% cleanlabel menu in our European markets. As we work towards this goal, our teams are exploring solutions for finished products. Our approach involves analysing our menu and engaging with our suppliers to reduce artificial ingredients and find non-artificial alternatives. The team has delivered a menu that is between 86% and 100% free of artificial colours, flavours and preservatives in our established markets. We now have stores in six markets with no artificial colours and stores in three markets with no artificial flavours. This is a significant step in our ambition to deliver a menu that is 100% free from artificial colours and flavours in all our markets.
We face challenges in achieving this goal, mostly related to the storage and transportation of certain products. Reducing the use of preservatives in meats and sauces has proven to be especially challenging as they play a role in extending shelf life and supporting food safety, which is our number one priority. We have made significant progress through continuous evaluation and refinement, collaboration with our suppliers and our drive to move to a clean-label standard. Domino’s keeps on looking for ways to remove preservatives in meats. However, removing nitrates is particularly challenging as they have been used for hundreds of years to preserve meat, especially in pork.
We are also making significant progress in reducing the fat and sodium content of our products in all markets. Our pizza dough is the foundation of every great pizza. We are in the process of upgrading all of our APAC stores to enable in-store dough preparation, making our handmade pizzas fresher and more enjoyable for customers. In Japan, we have already converted over 20% of our off-site dough-making stores to in-store dough-making. All of our newly opened stores from October 2022 are set up to enable in-store dough-making from the outset. Our European markets follow Nutri-Score guidelines, and the majority of our meals are in the B-D range of this scoring system (see ‘Our customers’).
In Europe and Australia, all of our vegetables, including tomatoes, peppers, mushrooms, onions and spinach are locally sourced. This ensures the freshness of our products, supports local farmers and improves the efficiency of our supply chain.
In line with our company vision, we assess all of our product innovations according to three main criteria: 1) design to be delivered, 2) 'pizzaness' (Domino’s X-factor) and 3) sustainability.
An important sustainable innovation we are looking into is the development of more sustainable meat alternatives to reduce the need for animal products and the environmental impact of intensive farming. We anticipate that this will extend to pilot innovation projects in regenerative agriculture or alternative sustainable solutions for our dairy, tomatoes, flour and beef.