Tom Monaghan and Domino's: A VW Beetle Trade and the 30-Minute Guarantee

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In 1960 Tom Monaghan and his brother Jim bought DomiNick's, a pizza shop near Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, with a $500 down payment and $900 borrowed. After eight months Jim, a full-time postman, traded his half for the Volkswagen Beetle they used for deliveries. Tom bought two more stores by 1965, but original owner Dominick DiVarti blocked use of the name, and employee Jim Kennedy suggested Domino's. The three dots on the domino logo stood for those three stores, with a plan to add a dot for each new one. In 1975 Amstar, maker of Domino Sugar, sued for trademark infringement.

While the case ran, Monaghan opened 15 stores as Pizza Dispatch as a fallback, and in 1980 the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in his favor. A strict menu of one crust, two sizes, 11 toppings and Coca-Cola supported the 30-minute delivery guarantee introduced in 1973. After a $2.8 million settlement in 1992 with the family of a woman killed by a delivery driver in Indiana, and a nearly $80 million punitive award the next year that settled for $15 million, the guarantee ended in late 1993. In 1998 Monaghan sold 93 percent of the company to Bain Capital for roughly $1 billion.

• During the lawsuit Monaghan also began converting some existing Domino's stores to Pizza Dispatch branding as a hedge.
• The guarantee was later softened from a free pizza to $3 off.
• Monaghan first hired Taliesin Associated Architects to build on Frank Lloyd Wright's unbuilt Golden Beacon design before the partnership dissolved.
• Gunnar Birkerts designed a 30-story Ann Arbor tower leaning 15 degrees, dubbed the Leaning Tower of Pizza; only a 50-foot model was built.
• The chain Monaghan started grew to more than 21,000 stores worldwide.