Domino’s to debut breaded ‘pizza chicken’ concoction

Are you ready to try a new pizza with breaded chicken in place of the dough?

The dish is probably not quite how you’d imagine it, and it won’t be circular shaped, but pizza chain Domino’s will soon be delivering the new concoction to customers all over the nation and abroad.

USA Today reports Domino’s announced plans Monday to begin offering four varieties of an item called Specialty Chicken on April 21.

The dish features pizza toppings baked into a bed of breaded, boneless chicken. It will be part of the pizza giant’s $5.99 value menu.

Domino’s will initially offer the chicken entree in four flavors: Crispy Bacon and Tomato, Spicy Jalepeno and Pineapple, Classic Hot Buffalo and Sweet BBQ Bacon.

CEO J. Patrick Doyle told USA Today that the number of offerings could grow over time, depending on the dish’s popularity.

Restaurant sales of chicken are on a roll. And sales of boneless chicken, in particular, are up 11 percent over the past three years, says NPD Group, the research specialist. Even before the new roll-out, Domino’s already sells more chicken than anything else besides pizza, says Doyle. That includes pasta, salads and soft drinks. It’s sold chicken wings for more than two decades. The key to this new dish, says Doyle, is that it gives consumers a chance to top chicken with the very same ingredients they like to layer on pizza. And for store owners, it doesn’t require stocking extra ingredients — since the toppings already are in the store.

Domino’s has been on a pretty good roll since it changed its pizza recipe back in 2010. It’s domestic same-store sales rose 3.7 percent in the fourth quarter of 2013, and its international same-store sales jumped 7 percent.

Doyle said that the company initially tested out the product with the name “Pizza Chicken,” but that “nobody knew what that was.”