From Domino’s to Dunkin’: 3 huge fast food retailers leveraging location intelligence for territory planning

Using location intelligence for territory planning will help you maximise profitability and minimise disputes between franchise partners. 

Whether you work in the fast food retail industry or elsewhere, there’s much value to gain from looking at what these big hitters have achieved, and how they went about it. 

How do fast food retailers use location intelligence for territory planning?

Here’s how three of the biggest brands on the planet have optimised their territory planning efforts using location intelligence:

1) Domino’s

Domino’s dispatches around 3 million pizzas every day from its network of around 16,000 locations, spread over 80 countries. 

93% of its US locations are franchises, while its global network contains over 400,000 franchised and corporate team members.

The company has derived numerous benefits from its use of location intelligence for territory planning, including, for example:

  • The balancing of franchise territories, resulting in a reduction in territory disputes and improved customer service 
  • More efficient and accurate location planning processes, achieved through the centralisation and intuitive visualisation of data
  • Integration of additional, potentially valuable datasets pertaining to local demographics/drive-times etc.
  • Development of a geocoding API, which refers an order to the nearest store as soon as it’s placed (online or via the app), thereby improving efficiency and insight gathering while also providing opportunities for targeted marketing

2) Dunkin’

Formerly ‘Dunkin’ Donuts’, this fast food retailer generates around $300m through coffee sales alone via its network of 12,800 restaurants in 44 countries.

The company has now adopted location intelligence for territory planning as the key driver of its expansion efforts, which when complete will see it open 1,000 new locations across Europe alone.

Previously, this mammoth chain administered disparate sources of data stored in a variety of spreadsheets in numerous locations. This stifled insight acquisition, as well as effective forecasting, undermining its bottom line.

Location intelligence has undoubtedly had a massive effect on this company. For instance, management can make decisions based on real-world data, predict/analyse the performance of new or existing locations, and decide on matters like branch refurbishment vs closure. 

In total, it saves around 17,000 work hours every year by streamlining the location planning and sales forecasting processes.

3) Yum! Brands

Yum! Brands owns KFC, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell, with a network comprising 48,000 locations and 2,000 franchise partners in over 140 countries. 

The company uses location intelligence software to open up an average of eight new restaurants every single day a feat unlikely to even be imaginable with manual systems alone. 

Before location intelligence, Yum! Brands was simply juggling Excel files stored in separate locations, with project managers and datasets assigned to different regions.

Now, the company uses location intelligence software to conduct detailed demographic analysis across 140 countries worldwide. All this data and more is combined into a single interface for senior management, enabling them to make profitable, insight-led decisions that are beneficial for the company, franchise partners and customers alike. 

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