Happy Friday, we hope you're keeping cool if you live in the southwest United States! Today's Chartr is 1,163 words, a 5 minute read, with charts exploring:
More dough
This week, Domino’s Pizza announced a surprising new partnership with Uber Eats and Uber-owned Postmates, a move that sent the company's shares soaring more than 13% in the last 5 days. The news marks a significant shift for the pizza giant. Historically, Domino's has been a staunch opponent of third-party delivery apps, keeping tight control over its product chain, supplying franchisees with everything from dough and ingredients to equipment and services through its enormous supply chain.
Whether you slice the numbers by sales or stores, Domino’s is the world’s largest pizza company, shipping more than 1.5 million pies every single day, through its network of franchised stores. That scale has enabled the company, until now, to resist the urge to partner with the food delivery apps.
But habits are changing. The company’s CEO, Russell Weiner, says that pizza delivery orders directly from chains aren’t growing — Domino’s reported a 2% decline in US delivery same-store sales for the first quarter this year — while app-based orders are on the rise. Pie rivals Papa Johns and Pizza Hut jumped on third-party delivery apps as early as 2019, and third-party delivery apps now account for 14% of pizza sales in the US, up from 4% before the pandemic, per analytics firm Circana.
The new partnership is expected to boost annual sales by up to $1 billion. That’s good news for the individual franchise operators and the parent company itself, which makes the majority of its profit from franchise royalties and fees. Indeed, just 8% of the company’s sales — and less of its profits — in the first quarter of 2023 were from company-owned stores.
Running lines
After a strung-out series of unsuccessful contract negotiations with a group representing major movie and TV studios, the Screen Actors Guild and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA for short) announced it would be joining the Writers Guild of America on the picket line in the first dual strike to hit Hollywood in over 60 years.
Stars like Cillian Murphy and Matt Damon left the London premiere of the hotly-anticipated Oppenheimer early following the strike’s announcement, and speculation is already brewing on how this will impact huge titles like Avatar 3, Gladiator 2, and many more in the coming months.
Act your wage
Many of SAG-AFTRA’s demands mirrored those of the Writers Guild before them, who set out on their strike over 2 months ago now, with actors calling for better pay and improved working conditions after seeing the industry warp and shift under the influence of technology. Performers are pointing to waning residuals (a form of royalty payment), wages that haven’t risen with inflation, and shorter seasons brought about by streaming that have meant less pay — on top of the threat of AI using their digital likeness in future.
It’s easy to picture the multi-millionaire Hollywood elite when we hear the word actor, but they only represent a tiny minority of the industry. Data from the American Community Survey reveals that actors typically earn unremarkable pay packets, with some 71% earning less than $40k in 2020.
Iconic
Royal Caribbean recently announced that its new mega cruise ship, the Icon of the Seas, passed its first round of sea trials, successfully navigating the open ocean for the first time ahead of its maiden voyage in January 2024. As far as response on social media goes, however, things haven't exactly been plain sailing.
With 20 decks, 15 bars, 2,350 crew members, space for 5,600 passengers, 7 pools, a neon-heavy color scheme, 6 “record-breaking” water slides, and a gross tonnage of 250,800, Royal Caribbean’s latest offering is either a “game changer” or a “hellish monstrosity”, depending on your perspective.
Longboats
The Icon of the Seas is just the latest instalment in Royal Caribbean's fleet of gargantuan cruise liners — the Norwegian company, which is actually based in Miami, has been leagues ahead of competitors when it comes to mega ships for years now. The company first began to pull away from the competition in the 90s with its range of Voyager Class ships, and they’ve been building them bigger ever since.
Royal Caribbean dominates the cruise liner game in terms of overall length, with ships occupying every one of the top 10 spots, and that’s not even including the Icon and its staggering 1,198ft (365 meter) span — more than double the length of the Washington Monument. The cruiser’s magnitude is hard to get your head around, but when laid flat, for example, the Eiffel Tower is a full 115ft shorter than the Icon.
• An AI company claims that it has produced 100 million songs, equalling the total number in Spotify’s entire catalog.
• Barbie has collaborated with more than 100 brands for its upcoming movie, with original toymaker Mattel either receiving a flat fee or somewhere between a 5-15% cut of sales.
• Amazon Prime Day sales have hit another record high this year, with the e-commerce giant shipping $12.7bn worth of goods across more than 375 million purchases.
• Fascinating article from Rest of World, which commissioned work from 4 freelancers to learn how they use generative AI tools to supercharge their work.
• Visualizing the steep drop in Americans' confidence in higher education.
Off the charts: Disney chief Bob Iger announced on Thursday that the House of Mouse would be cutting back spending on which 2 mega franchises that fall under the company's huge content umbrella? [Answer below].
