Domino’s has been something of an exception in the pizza market of late. The chain’s same-store sales have increased for nine straight quarters, including 3.7% in the U.S. in the fourth quarter last year.
The rest of the market appears stuck in the mud. Rival Pizza Hut, which Domino’s surpassed in 2017 to become the country’s largest pizza chain, continues to struggle and has been thrust into an uncertain M&A market by parent Yum Brands.
Papa Johns appeared headed for a sale of its own until the potential buyer reportedly pulled back its offer for the company. And don’t get us started on the fast-casual version of the pizza business, if it even exists any longer.
Yet those chains’ problems are not indicative of the pizza sector’s health, or so says Russell Weiner, CEO of Domino’s, who kicked off the company’s fourth-quarter earnings report with a full-throated defense of the business—and a bit of muscle-flexing.
“There seems to be a narrative out there that pizza is a challenged and declining category,” he said. “That is just not true.”
Weiner noted on the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call Monday that the fast-food pizza sector grows about 1% to 2% per year and has for some time. He says that challenges with Domino’s top competitors are the result of Domino’s own strength, and not from broad-based sector issues.
“The pizza category is certainly mature,” he said. “But do not let the challenges of some of our higher-profile competitors drive a false narrative. Our competitors’ result is not a reflection of the category’s health or its future potential. The results are a direct reflection of our strength.
“Domino’s has dominated the QSR pizza category for over a decade and we expect our momentum will continue.”
Weiner’s segment defense is understandable. The company’s stock is down 15% over the past year, despite Domino’s relative sales strength. Some of that may be due to overarching concerns about the pizza business, which has lost share to third-party delivery companies while the fast-food business overall has weakened due to consumer concerns about inflation.
And the pizza business has indeed stagnated, at best, and is losing customers, certainly on a per-store basis. This graphic, showing the sector’s total sales and annual growth rates, spell that out.
If we remove 2020 and 2021, when a captive market drove enormous sales at certain pizza chains, the sector has indeed grown at a rate of just over 2% annually from 2018 through 2023. But that last year may need a caveat, given the enormous inflation that year.
But the past two years have hardly been reflective of a growing business. The sector’s sales grew just 0.4% in 2024, which is well below menu price inflation and can be fully explained by the 0.4% unit growth that year.
In 2025, according to preliminary Technomic data, the sector grew just 0.1%, which again can be attributed to unit growth, which was about the same level. On a price-adjusted basis, each of the last two years’ results represent a real market decline. And by no small amount.
Domino’s represents about 31% of the U.S. fast-food pizza market and it generated 4.8% retail sales growth last year, suggesting that the remaining 69% lost sales. It generated 5.3% retail sales growth in 2024 when the overall business grew just 0.4%. Suffice it to say the non-Domino’s pizza business on average is performing poorly.
The question of what’s causing this slowdown is a better one. It’s difficult for a sector to grow when two of the four largest chains, Pizza Hut and Papa Johns, are having problems. Pizza Hut’s sales stagnation over the past two decades on its own have probably held the sector back.
At the same time, the pizza business does have its challenges. The market is saturated. Third-party delivery has siphoned off a certain percentage of customers. The low-income diner remains difficult. And in markets in which there is a limited amount of demand, consumers pick winners and losers. Right now they’re picking Domino’s.