Domino's pizza prices are likely to rise this year as employment costs continue to climb, according to the company's chief executive.
Andrew Rennie said that price increases will be necessary to offset the rising cost of labour.
"Look, there's no doubt, I think later on in the year, there'll be some need to do that," Mr Rennie said.
However, he said the exact amount of the price hike remains uncertain.
Mr Rennie cited unpredictable government policies as a factor making it difficult to forecast the precise increase.
The company, which employs at least 35,000 workers, is facing a significant rise in its employment bill from April onwards.
Both the national minimum wage and employer national insurance contributions (NICs) are set to increase, adding to the financial pressure. Domino's has already reported a £3 million annual impact from the rise in NICs alone.
The increased minimum wage will add approximately 10 per cent to franchise operators' employment costs, amounting to tens of millions of pounds.
Mr Rennie said: “It depends on what the consumer does.
“If the national living wage puts more money into consumers’ pockets, and they start spending more, we may not need to do much at all.
“The trouble is, every morning we wake up there’s something different being announced. We don’t know what the second half of the year holds.”
Meanwhile, the company wants half of the pizzas it sells to be collected by customers in future, rather than delivered.
Mr Rennie said he is “going after collection in a bigger way this year”, partly to mitigate the rising costs.
Domino’s has thousands of delivery drivers and riders, who ferried its pizzas to customers in an average of 24-and-a-half minutes per order last year.
But cutting out the delivery element would allow Domino’s to make more money from each pizza.
Mr Rennie said: “Collection is very efficient for franchisees, it is a lot lower labour, so it actually brings you more margin.”
Just over one-third of Domino’s orders are picked up by customers in the UK and Ireland, but Mr Rennie said he wants to emulate the situation in the US, where the figure is 55 per cent.
He did not put a timeframe on when it might reach the target, adding that it is “not going to happen straight away”.
Part of the plan centres around opening more stores in rural areas, which “often have limited competition, and our strong national brand is a significant competitive advantage” compared to in cities.
Mr Rennie, who once ran a 30-strong Domino’s franchise in Australia, said: “When I was a franchise I used to own all my stores in rural areas and we had some of the highest collection (of) percentages in the country.
“It’s easy to park, it’s easy to drive there and you save money… When we open stores in country areas right now, we have a much higher collection percentage than we do in the urban areas.”
The London-listed company opened 54 stores across the UK and Ireland in 2024 and plans to open more than 50 more this year, with a target of more than 1,600 by 2028.
Sales had continued to rise in the first 10 weeks of the new financial year.
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