If you're between 18 and 34 and have a job, particularly if you live alone or with a working flatmate, Chris Moore, the boss of Domino's Pizza delivery chain, probably knows more about your weekend social life, or lack of it, than all but your closest friends. You are his target customer.

And the home truths from bedsit Britain do not make for pretty reading. Billions of pounds, he explains, have been spent on flat-screen TVs, home cinemas and games consoles in recent years. Evening meals are frequently selected from three delivery numbers on fliers kept in a drawer - an Indian, Chinese or pizza - then consumed on the sofa in front of the box.

Supplies of cut-price lager and cigarettes, unavailable or outlawed in the local pub, have been bought in advance, and the television schedules have been scanned for favourite phone-in reality shows (Domino's sponsors Britain's Got Talent

In short, staying in is the new going out. It is an opportunity for what Moore calls the "time-poor cash-rich" to shut the door on a gloomy world and indulge in some seriously comforting indulgences after a tough working week.

So closely does Moore track these domestic trends that he even claims to be monitoring an emerging habit among people living alone of buying a large pizza on a Friday night, eating some of it, and saving the rest in the fridge for the next day. "People are eating more and more cold pizza, which would never be the case 20 years ago," he explains. "It's a sign of a mature market."

As the economic storm clouds gather, numbers staying in have continued to climb, if anything accelerating. "Instead of spending £60 to £70 at a restaurant they're spending £20 to £30 on a Domino's pizza and staying at home, without anyone saying: [Moore puts on a nasal voice] 'Don't drink, don't smoke, don't do this or that.' It's their place."

But Moore insists Domino's is not feeding a nation of couch potatoes - a suggestion he has struggled to refute before. He claims it is catering more to people with busy lives rather than those slobbing out on the sofa. "There's actually an argument that says maybe the pizza draws the family together. For example, if you have an Indian dinner and you shout up to the kids 'Guys, the food's arrived', it's 15 minutes before they're downstairs. But if you have a Domino's delivery and say: 'Guys, the pizza's arrived', they'll be down there [he snaps his fingers] like that. To say it's the social glue is a horrible expression but it does get the clan gathering." This is how it works when the Pepperoni Passion arrives on Friday night at the Moores's, he insists.

Almost a third of Domino's Pizza business is taken over two frenetic four-hour spells on Friday and Saturday evenings, and Moore, who has been at the company for 17 years, admits the company has made meeting this surge of demand an obsession. Most of the group's 550 stores have telephone lines and pizza topping stations solely for that purpose, remaining idle for the rest of the week.

The trend for ordering in food is nothing new. But its resilience against the backdrop of a wider economic decline has made Domino's the talk of the City. The company, which controls a UK and Ireland master franchise for the Detroit-originated chain, recently posted comparable sales for January - traditionally the slowest month of the year for the restaurant trade - up 15%. The business graduated from the junior Aim market to a listing on the main stock exchange only last year but has already stormed up the rankings to become a mid-table FTSE 250 company by market capitalisation. It continues to add 50 stores a year and will next year move its main Milton Keynes food factory to a nearby site more than four times the size.

Part of the secret behind Domino's success is Moore's acute understanding of what his customers want at the end of a hectic week and how quickly they want it. His catchphrase, harking back to the early 1990s when then Detroit-owned Domino's offered a delivery time guarantee, is "after 30 minutes hunger turns to anger".

While customers are no longer offered compensation for deliveries that take longer than the half-hour target, the business is focused around driving down what is internally known as the "at the door time". Across the group the average is currently 23 minutes. Store managers can see these times updated minute by minute on in-store screens and are able to compare their team's performance with rival stores. Typically they are paid a bonus for out-performing their peers. After taking a tour of several stores one impressed visitor once described it all as "Thatcherism on acid", Moore recalls.

Next month the Domino's boss will host the company's annual awards to celebrate along with the group's 130 franchisees the achievements of store teams. Past events have seen Moore hand out gongs dressed up in lederhosen (ahead of a Domino's promotion around the World Cup in Germany), as Marge Simpson, Lieutenant Uhura from Star Trek, and as Marilyn Monroe. "We have a lot of fun."

Before drifting into a first job in advertising, Moore dreamed of making his fortune as a bass guitarist, and he clearly enjoys the attention he and Domino's are getting. He remains unique among leisure sector bosses, claiming recessionary pressures are actually benefiting his business. It is a bold claim, and one that will be further tested this year and next.

But Moore remains resolutely confident, comparing the bigger, stronger Domino's of today with the 37 stores that limped through the recession of the early 1990s when he first joined the business. A store in Barking came close to going under when the Dagenham Ford plant went down to a three-day week in 1991, he recalls. By contrast, fears more recently about the prospects for Domino's stores in Swindon - where Honda has mothballed a plant and bust retailer Woolworths has shut a distribution centre - proved unfounded. Local stores continue to show double-digit growth.