design matters. Looking burgerwards for a bigger slice

The burger has in the recent past been a fertile field for innovation. Whether it’s the use of liquid nitrogen to make the patty crisper or agar agar to give the filling a custardy feel, or black and red burgers that Burger King launched in a few countries, or open-faced and deconstructed burgers, the common man’s comfort food in the West is now a gourmet affair the world over.

To add to this, pizza chain Domino’s in India recently launched a Burger Pizza. This is a bun sliced through to fill it with the core of a pizza, sans the crust – cheese, meat or vegetables/cottage cheese, sauce, spices. Its aim: To take a slice out of the burger market for itself.

S. Murugan Narayanaswami, Senior Vice-President (Marketing), Domino’s, says pizza is seen as a lunch and dinner replacement while burgers and sandwiches are perceived as foods that can be eaten at any time of the day. Burgers occupy 29.9 per cent share in the Indian QSR market, while pizzas occupy 26.7 per cent share as per a Euromonitor report. According to Assocham, the QSR market in India is worth ₹8,500 crore.

Discretionary spending by consumers is low and the hope is that new and quirky varieties will get them to loosen their purse strings. Not only that, Domino’s aims to strengthen the dine-in part of its business with this snack as burgers are generally eaten inside the store, unlike pizzas, which are consumed both in-store and via home delivery.

“We choose our innovations based on how “real” they can be, whether they can cater to various tastes and trends. More people travel abroad today and there’s a proliferation of food channels. This fuels our choices,” says Narayanaswamy, adding that these factors have resulted in various forms of pizzas and exotic Italian ones launched in collaboration with New York-based, Michelin-starred Indian chef Vikas Khanna.

Narendra Jaravta, Head Chef at Domino’s, says the challenge was to make the new offering look wholesome. “Pizza is a social food. Generally, it’s shared. It’s cut into six or eight or twelve slices. We were looking at an opportunity for individual consumption.”

Domino’s wanted customers to buy its products all through the day, and not just at lunch and dinner time. What could it conjure up that could be eaten whole but tasted as good as pizza? It did not want to diversify into other food forms or fried stuff. Jaravta tried splitting up a 4-5-inch pizza and sandwiching it but was not satisfied with its look - it looked very small. A couple of other pizza formats also didn’t make the grade.

The Domino’s team then hit upon the idea of a bun. First, Jaravta filled the dough with oregano and chilli flakes, two condiments long identified with pizza, but later, only filled the top layer of the bun with them. The cheese and the filling were then put between the two buns and baked. And voila, there was the Burger Pizza!

On social media, the reactions ranged from incredulous to adulatory to calling it a nightmare. But for sure, this India-bred hybrid has set tongues wagging across the world!

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