What is common between Dubai hosting COP28 and pizza? A lot, if you look at the revolutionary move by Dodo Pizza, a multinational pizza chain, to promote delivery of the most popular Italian-origin dish in reusable boxes to customers in Dubai, coinciding with the city’s all-out efforts to make the UN conference on climate change a historic event.
As the worldwide climate conference began in late November, Dodo Brands, the tech-powered parent company of Dodo Pizza, achieved a feat of reaching 11 percent or orders in Dubai in reusable packaging and has set its eyes on reaching 30 percent by next year.
To put the climatic impact of the company’s initiative in perspective, one reusable pizza case replaces 500 disposable pizza boxes, reducing use of cardboard significantly, cutting the emission of CO2 after 11.1 uses and minimizing the amount of delivery waste by saving 10,000 disposable pizza boxes from being sent to landfills annually.
“The launch of reusable pizza cases [in Dubai] was no exception, as it comes at a time when local communities, enthused by the global climate event in the city, are eager to embrace ecological initiatives and seek sustainable consumption options – and so do we. Together, we can pioneer revolutionary food delivery standards,” Fyodor Ovchinnikov, Founder and CEO of Dodo Brands, told Arabian Business.
“UAE is Dodo Pizza’s strategic market and the hub of our Middle East expansion. We aim to push traditional pizza industry boundaries, and Dubai is an ideal place to test all of Dodo’s technologies and innovations,” Ovchinnikov said.
Customers in Dubai can select the free reusable packaging option when ordering on the website or through the mobile application of Dodo Pizza.
Upon delivery, clients are offered to replace the pizza on their own plate and return the case to the delivery driver immediately or ask them to pick it up later.
Only orders made via Dodo Pizza’s website and mobile application will have the option for reusable packages, as reusable pizza boxes are currently not available for delivery through aggregators.
Dodo Pizza claimed that it is the first food delivery company in the Middle East that offers this option, and the only one worldwide that made it free for the customers.
Reusable pizza boxes as good as normal packaging
The company executives said Dodo Pizza cases are made from sustainable plastic that does not absorb any ingredients, while the whole production process includes no trees or forests being harvested.
The deep cleaning and sanitizing of every pizza case that is reusable up to 500 times is performed, along with recycling once it reaches the end of its lifespan.
“A reusable case outperforms a typical pizza box in almost every dimension,” said Altyn Nugmanova, Chief Sustainability Officer at Dodo Brands.
R&D tests have shown that reusable pizza boxes keep pizza temperatures and taste qualities as long as normal pizza boxes.
Nugmanova said the reusable packaging is more expensive at first, but in just 11 deliveries it comes to the same cost as one disposable box, while customers have no waste to deal with.
“We plan to establish a strong presence here in Dubai, and by offering reusable packaging options within every store we can significantly decrease the amount of delivery waste,.” Nugmanova said.
Ovchinnikov said delivery in reusable pizza boxes was firstly rolled out in Dubai as an experiment, followed by the launch of this alternative packaging option in Poland and Slovenia.
Reusable packaging is one of the measures Dodo Pizza implements to minimize food and delivery waste.
Its self-developed AI-powered supply planning and forecasting solutions allow the pizza chain to avoid excessive inventory and ingredient preparations for all its units across 18 countries. Besides that, the company uses AI algorithms to identify waste reasons and decrease the waste ratio per store.
Dodo Pizza’s rapid expansion in Dubai
Ovchinnikov said Dodo Pizza, which opened its first UAE location in Dubai Marina in January 2023, plans to open 27 more pizza stores across Dubai by the end of 2025.
Most of these units will be opened under the franchisee model.
“Dubai clients showed a strong interest in eco-friendly pizza packaging. Since March, 11 percent of pizza orders have been delivered in reusable pizza boxes. We are now analyzing our clients’ experiences to understand how we can improve to triple this rate in the near future,” Nugmanova said.
Dodo Pizza, part of Dodo Brands launched in 2011 by Fyodor Ovchinnikov, currently has over 1,000 franchised and owned locations in 18 countries, with its system sales reaching $870 million in 2022.
Committed to the principle of radical transparency, Dodo Brands publishes sales of its every unit on the company’s website.
Besides, its proprietary cloud-based technology platform, Dodo IS, is made available to the company’s partners under the franchise agreement, which enables them to manage every aspect of restaurants’ operations, including staff management, quality control, sales analytics, order tracking, and personalization of prices and marketing.
Besides Dodo Pizza, the parent company’s other digital-first QSR brands include the coffee brand DrinkIt and kebab brand Doner42.
Follow us on
