Dominos and Pizza Hut are awful in Australia and New Zealand. $5 here is pretty much poverty food; even McDonalds cost way more. In UK Domino's is ok, but cost around 15 pounds delivered.
I agree that Dominos is awful now. I always thought Pizza Hut was pretty bad.
I think when Dominos changed from real baking ovens to what they now use (effectively a conveyorized giant hair dryer) there was a marked change. They had to change the dough so it would not bubble, because the point of the automatic oven is that you would not need a skilled person to monitor the baking.
The conveyor ovens do save labor. When you have 600-degree baking ovens stacked in decks, and you have to watch for and pop bubbles and turn the pies halfway through, and the difference between a pizza being "done" and "burnt" is about 30 seconds, it requires an attentive and coordinated person (sometimes two or three if they are busy) to manage it all. But the pizzas taste better.
