THE SUCCESS STORY OF THOMAS MONAGHAN CEO OF DOMINO PIZZA WILL TEACH HOW TO HANDLE FAILURES

One of the best role models for illustrating how to handle failure and disappointment is Thomas s. Monaghan, founder, president and chairman of domino,s pizza,inc. if by some faint chance you have never seen or tasted a domino’s pizza, there are 3,300 domino’s pizzerias spread across America, none of which have tables.that is because domino’s is the absolute king of home-delivered pizza anywhere you want it, within reason, of course.

The success domino’s enjoys today grew out of the fertilizer of enough failures to bury several businesses. First, a bad partnership nearly dragged the business under in 1965. In 1968, insurance paid off only one tenth of the loss from a $150,000 fire.

By 1970, management of the debt ridden pizza chain was assumed by a principal creditor, a bank. Ten months later, domino’s owner, lawsuits, fifteen hundred creditors and an over all debt of $1.5 million.

No one  would have really blamed Monaghan for folding his pizza tenth and quietly fading away. But he was used to disappointment and crises. He was four years old when his father died. He had grown up in foster homes, had worked as a farm hand, a pinsetter in a bowling alley, and a newsboy.

In 1970, facing overwhelming debts and problems, Monaghan  did not fold and go into bankruptcy, he dug In his heels and used his failures to fertilize new seeds of success.

Not only did Thomas Monaghan fight off the lawsuits, the creditors, and the debts, but he led domino’s back from the edge of the financial grave to the very top of the food service industry.today, domino’s rate among the fifty leading food service organization in America and is still climbing.

It is considered the second largest pizza company in the country, the fastest growing fast food service, and the undisputed leader in home delivery. In Monaghan’s words, “domino’s has a single goal, it’s mission; to deliver high quality pizza,  hot, within thirty minutes at a fair price”. Everything done at domino’s says Monaghan is centered on that goal.

When all these began in 1960. Thomas Monaghan was twenty three years old. He and his brother bought  nondescript little pizza parlor in Ypsilanti, Michigan, a tiny community between Detroit and Ann arbor and practically on the campus of eastern Michigan university.

Tom was already running a street corner newsstand, and he thought the pizzeria would give him additional income to use toward earning a college degree in architecture. In a year, tom had become sole owner of the shop called do-mi-nick’s at the time.

Finally, he decided to drop out of college and make a go of the pizza parlor. A year later, he added  another shop near the campus of central Michigan university, and on the first delivery run he ever made, he met his future wife,  Margie, in a girls’ dormitory on the central Michigan campus.

Monaghan learned the pizza trade as he practiced it, by trial and error. The fast preparation techniques domino’s uses today were developed by Monaghan as he sweat it out in that first little pizza shop, elbow deep in flour and tomatoes, hustling to make deliveries to the college campuses before the dorms closed.

In 1985, domino’s patrons ordered 15 million pizzas and pushed domino’s sales to more than $1 billion, which is 73 percent higher than in 1984. In 1985, 954 new domino’s pizzerias opened, an all time record for the food service industry.