How much does it cost to open a Domino's franchise in Australia?

Domino’s is Australia’s largest pizza chain and one of the country’s best-known franchise systems, built around delivery and digital ordering. It’s also a network where ownership is usually earned from the inside rather than bought cold — most new franchisees come up through the stores first. Figures below are indicative and were last verified in July 2026 — always confirm the current numbers against Domino’s franchise disclosure document before committing.

The total upfront investment for a new Domino’s store generally falls between $400,000 and $650,000 + GST. Buying an existing store instead ranges from around $500,000 to $850,000 + GST, depending on turnover and location. The wide range reflects differences in lease, location, store size and fit-out complexity. For the broader picture across brands, see our pillar guide on how much it costs to open a franchise in Australia.

You don’t have to fund the whole amount in cash. Domino’s generally requires a minimum of $250,000–$300,000 + GST in cash or equity — roughly 40% of the total — with the remaining ~60% typically financed. Domino’s has pre-approved lending relationships with major banks, which makes finance easier to arrange than for many independent businesses, but you still carry the loan and its repayments as a fixed cost from day one.

Once you’re trading, Domino’s takes a combined ~13% of gross sales:

• Royalty fee — 7% of gross sales. Paid for the use of the brand and system.
• National advertising levy — 6% of gross sales. Funds national and local marketing.

These come off the top of revenue, before rent, wages, stock and utilities. On a store turning over $15,000 a week, that’s about $1,950 a week — roughly $101,000 a year — in franchisor fees alone.

Money isn’t the main gate — experience is. Domino’s strongly favours internal applicants and usually requires 1–2 years managing an existing store as a General Manager before you can own one. The path is deliberately hands-on: you learn the operation from the floor up, which is why the $25,000 + GST training fee is mandatory for every new owner. If you’re coming from outside the system, expect to spend time in a store first.

Setup cost is a one-off. Labour is forever — and in a Domino’s store it typically lands at 25–35% of revenue. What makes a pizza store different from most QSR is the delivery model: on top of ordinary wages, your delivery drivers attract per-kilometre allowances — roughly $0.95/km for a car and $0.34/km for a motorbike (from 1 July 2025) — so every delivery carries a running cost that never appears in a “cost to open a Domino’s” guide. Get the driver-and-maker mix wrong and that percentage climbs fast.

Domino’s staff are covered by the Fast Food Industry Award (MA000003). What pushes the labour percentage up isn’t the base rate — it’s when and how your team works:

• Casual loading of 25% on top of the base rate, and most QSR staff are casual.
• Evening, weekend and late-night penalty rates — and those are exactly the peak trade windows for a pizza store.
• Delivery-driver kilometre allowances under the award — approximately $0.95/km for a car and $0.34/km for a motorbike (from 1 July 2025) — a real, per-delivery cost most guides never mention.

The lever is rostering to demand. A pizza store’s trade isn’t flat — it spikes on late-night and weekend delivery peaks, then goes quiet mid-afternoon. The job is to balance in-store makers against drivers hour by hour, so you have enough hands on the makeline when orders surge without paying drivers to wait for pings during the lulls. Keep driver hours efficient, push staffing off penalty windows where you can, and track rostered versus actual hours. That’s the difference between a Domino’s that clears a healthy margin and one that runs the owner into the ground — see our guide to penalty rates in Australia.

It can be — average rolling store EBITDA in Australia has been reported at around $103,000 — but the Domino’s model squeezes margin from several sides at once. Ingredients come from the internal supply chain at a set markup, so you can’t shop food cost down; tech and eStore fees of about $1,000 a month run whether trade is busy or flat; and the GM-first ownership pathway means most owners arrive already knowing the operation but still carrying loan repayments from day one. Against that backdrop, labour is the one big cost you genuinely control. Delivery volume and catchment set your ceiling, but a well-rostered store and a poorly-rostered one on identical sales can differ by tens of thousands in annual profit. For the wider question, see are franchises profitable in Australia?

This is where the ongoing decision matters more than the opening one. If you go on to run more than one store, multi-site rostering for franchise operators becomes the core skill — and it’s the problem RosterElf’s franchise workforce management is built to solve. Weighing up other brands too? Compare with the cost to open a Subway franchise and the cost to open a KFC franchise.