Chief Executive Officer (current, through Sep 30, 2026), Domino's Pizza, Inc.
Domino's Pizza CEO Russell Weiner goes one-on-one with Jim Cramer
Domino's Pizza CEO Russell Weiner joins 'Mad Money' host Jim Cramer to talk quarterly results, consumer trends, and more.
About Russell Weiner
During Domino's Pizza's second quarter 2026 earnings call on July 20, 2026, CEO Russell Weiner stated that the company's order counts were "up meaningfully" in total, as well as individually in both delivery and carryout. He said the company believes the overall QSR industry order counts were flat during the quarter, and described Domino's performance as "significant" in that context. Weiner attributed the company's approach to a "barbell" strategy focused on order counts and ticket size, and said that driving order counts is correlated with franchisee profitability and customer acquisition through the loyalty program. Weiner acknowledged a "discrete event" in the second quarter that negatively impacted franchisee profitability due to a "ticket drag," but said the company is "fixing it" and that it should not affect long-term franchisee profitability. He described the most important lesson from his nearly two decades with Domino's as the principle that "order counts drive long-term success" and that winners in QSR grow order counts while maintaining "healthy ticket through discipline pricing."
Transcript (22 segments)
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Jim Cramer0:03
What do you make of these numbers from Domino's Pizza? Now, I've long felt that the world's number one pizza chain could hold up just fine, even in a more difficult economy. This morning, though, Domino's reported a decidedly mixed quarter: softer than expected revenue, but a 26 cent earnings beat off its $4.07 basis. Domestic same store sales down 0.5%. Wall Street was looking at 0.3%. Initially, the stock opened down 2.2%, but management set a very, very positive, confident tone on the conference call, reaffirmed most of the full year forecast, which allowed it to rebound, finishing the session up more than a half percent. So where do we go from here? Let's check in with Russell Weiner. He's the CEO of Domino's Pizza to get a better sense of the quarter. And what's next? Mr. Weiner, welcome back to Mad Money, Jim.
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Russell Weiner0:50
Hey, good to see.
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Jim Cramer0:51
You again. Good to see you. Now, Russell, obviously the market initially didn't like the numbers, but as you talked, you made out. I thought you laid out a very good long term case for why Domino's pizza is the right kind of stock actually, to own in this market. What makes you so confident, given the fact that the same store sales were a slight miss?
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Russell Weiner1:12
Well, you know. Jim, there's.
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Jim Cramer1:14
The short term. And the medium term.
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Russell Weiner1:16
Obviously long term is long term. But in the short term, look, we had a quarter. We missed a little bit. But we grew market share. We grew market share almost a point pretty much every year, Jim, that I've been here for 16 years. And so I think relative to the rest of the category, that is what people were looking for. And then we talked about what we have coming for the rest of the year. This was probably the lightest quarter as far as big initiatives. And in Q2 we have stuffed crust, and Q3 and Q4 we were on DoorDash. So we've got a lot more coming.
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Jim Cramer1:45
Coming now. Stuffed crust is something that was a big hit, obviously a big hit for a competitor for a very long time. Why didn't you guys have this before? Because to me, this is the innovation that would take you guys out of your regular comfort zone. And it's something that I think has a lot more to offer.
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Russell Weiner2:03
Yeah. You know, for us, we're ready to launch an innovation when our operations is ready for it. And the fact that this stuffed crust is a little bit more difficult to make, we have busier pizza stores than most. And so what we've done over the last couple of years is through training, through it, we've improved our service. Q1 during earnings, we talked about being two minutes better than we were two years prior on delivery. And so we got our operations where they needed to be. And so now we're ready to bring in this a little bit more complex pizza to make without really affecting operations at all. And so far consumer input has been really positive. So I'm glad we waited, but I'm even more glad that we launched it.
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Jim Cramer2:43
That sounds, that makes a great deal of sense to me now. DoorDash, you were trying to explain the incrementality, what it does mean, and for our viewers without being too fancy. Can you talk about the app and what it might mean to people who would not normally order Domino's, who might now?
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Russell Weiner2:59
Yeah. Well, you know, Jim, we stayed out of the aggregator marketplace for a while. We didn't want to help it grow, but it's a big piece of where people order today and we need to meet customers where they are. There's about $5 billion worth of pizza that are sold in the aggregator marketplace. About a billion of it could be ours. That's our fair share. If we were on aggregators last year, we got on Uber. We're getting towards the in May and towards the second half of this year we'll be on DoorDash. DoorDash sells about twice as many pizzas as Uber. So when you think about the Q1 numbers and realize we didn't have stuffed crust pizza, we weren't on the biggest aggregator, it puts Q1 in perspective and gives you a little more sense of why we're bullish kind of for the rest of the year.
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Jim Cramer3:43
It makes sense now. Since 2010, when I've been following it, you guys have gone from, at least according to the Groks of the world, around 5000 stores in America to around 7000. And I know that you only did, there were not many, what was actually 17 additional this quarter? But is there still room for another 1000, if you want to think about it that way?
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Russell Weiner4:04
Yeah, absolutely. You know, we find, Jim, the more we grow, the more we can grow. And the reason is because the carryout business. So when you look at the stores we have to open, still about two thirds of them are splits, meaning we take a territory and we split it. Now the interesting thing is, just like our drivers, consumers don't want to drive far to pick up their pizza. So when we split a territory, 80% of the carryout business is incremental, which means the store pays for itself right away. Then over time, delivery gets more efficient. And that's when it all comes together. So yeah, absolutely. We've got more, many more stores to build here in the United States.
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Jim Cramer4:45
So talk to me about international. It's obviously the numbers are terrific there. But also I think that you seem to be trying to be sure that everybody who's a franchisee is well capitalized, or else it just doesn't make sense.
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Russell Weiner4:56
Yeah. Well, look, I mean, we've got, when you think about our two biggest markets from a growth perspective, 40 plus percent of our store growth moving forward is China and India. They're corporately owned markets. So capitalization is really important for them. But so is the ROI. And these are kind of best in class ROI, cash on cash for those stores.
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Jim Cramer5:17
Now one of the things, one of my theses for this particular market is as we go forward with the tariffs, we're going to have two classes of stock. There's going to be the ones that are tariffed and the ones that aren't. I can't, for the life of me, try to figure out where you could be tariffed. And I couldn't come up with it.
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Russell Weiner5:33
Yeah. No, we're not. We talked about this on the call. We're not really exposed from an ingredient standpoint. I think, you know, maybe some could think secondarily if consumer disposable income is down because they're spending on other things, they have less money to spend on restaurants. But Jim, this is what really makes Domino's, like you said during these times, just a great value for customers and for investors. Think about if customers are looking for value, what do you need to provide them? Value. You need a best in class supply chain that has scale, that doesn't pass on high prices to franchisees, so they don't have to pass them on to customers. You need huge advertising budget, right? Because percentage margin is low. You want the cash margin to be high. You need lots of volume. We have a half $1 billion marketing budget, and then you need franchisees that are well capitalized. The average EBITDA of our stores last year was $162,000, which by far is best in class. And so we have the ability during these tougher times to continue to build this competitive moat and offer value long term to customers, not only build market share now, but when we come out, remember we'll be coming out with better operations. Consumer will have experience, our stuffed crust, DoorDash, all of that kind of stuff. So this is really what we are built for, and we're going to come out really good on the other side.
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Jim Cramer6:57
Other side. One last question. I know it's not a substantive question. I understand that it creates no value whatsoever, but there are a lot of people who bought this stock at $10 when I recommended it, when Pat Doyle started. And one of the things they loved about it was that it was not a high dollar amount stock. Now, I know $500 is no different from $10, doesn't create any value at all. But people have asked me, please ask him when there could be a split. So I just put it out there, knowing it does not create value.
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Russell Weiner7:24
Yeah, well, I was going to say, you know, Jim, you answered the question. I will say on days like this, when you're up or down a percent or two, you know, it makes me look at the numbers and say, hey, you know, it'd be nice if that dollar figure was a little smaller. So I understand what they're talking about. But as you know, we're going to do what's right for our investors. And that's just, it's not a good investment.
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Jim Cramer7:46
Understood. All right. Russell Weiner, CEO of Domino's Pizza. Remember, open down two, finished up. And you heard what matters is the future. There's so many things in the pipe here. I think this one's ready to roar. Russell, thank you for coming on the show.
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Russell Weiner7:59
Thanks, Jim so much.
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Jim Cramer8:00
Absolutely. Mad Money back after the break. Coming up: Cramer's been in the game since the Dow is at 10,000. So how have the top stocks in this market performed over the past 20 years? Cramer is looking back at their moves during Mad...