Domino's spotlights a farm connection

Who’d have thought Domino’s would jump ahead of the big-chain pack in embracing the local-agriculture aspect of sustainability?

Cheese from Wisconsin is hardly local when it tops a pizza sold by a Domino’s in Alabama, California or Massachusetts. Still, the delivery giant is breaking new ground with the just-introduced Wisconsin 6 Cheese pie and the commercial supporting it.

At the very least, the Michigan-based chain is specifying where a main ingredient was sourced. That’s a marked departure from the usual chain pronouncement that Ingredient X is wholesome, fresh and delicious. In this day and age, those bromides are taken to mean the item is factory-produced, unnaturally consistent and perfect-looking, and muted sufficiently in taste to displease no one.

Domino’s is promising that the cheese on the new pie actually comes from farms, and it’ll even tell you where they are. There’s an implied direct connection between the multinational chain and the mom-and-pop dairy producers of farmland America.

Indeed, the commercial suggests that Domino’s isn’t ashamed of anything it puts on the pies, and is willing to specify where each component was produced.

Perhaps more important, the franchisor has pledged to start a website, “Behind the Pizza,” where consumers can meet the farmers who produce 10 of the ingredients that go into Domino’s products. Visitors will learn about the trip from farm row to delivery box.

Sure, there’s some hype to the promotion. The Associated Press has reported that not all the cheese used on the new Wisconsin pie is actually from that state. And a buyer from Domino’s isn’t toodling down a dirt road in his dirt-caked pick-up, buying a block of cheddar or mozzarella from a guy in overalls named Clem.

Truth be told, the buy-local/sustainability movement is a multi-layered phenomenon. Ideally it’s serving what was produced a turnip’s throw away from the restaurant and picked that morning. If that’s not feasible, the next best thing is serving something seasonal and fresh, regardless of where it’s from. And if that’s not do-able, it’s providing food with a narrative of where it came from and how it got there.

At least Domino’s is addressing the mega-trend of the moment.
We’re in the midst of a cultural revolution that’s reshaping the way America eats—and lives. The shift to local foods holds profound implications for parties ranging from the local café to grade schools, parents, banquet managers, community planners, even residential developers.

It’s nice to see that chain restaurants aren’t sitting apart, idly watching truckloads of farm-fresh produce roll past.

Forget the auto bailout. Send Pizza Hut instead.

Yum! Brands should do the patriotic thing and lend Pizza Hut’s menu development team to the Big Three auto companies. The wheezing giants desperately need innovation to make their products competitive again. Pizza Hut, as Sunday’s football broadcasts revealed, has nailed that ability to meet mainstream America’s preferences, before the public even senses the desire. The decades-old concept has transformed itself from a commodity seller into a consumer products business that just happens to use bargain-priced food as its means of satisfying a need.

The most recent bit of evidence is the pie that was advertised here in New York during the Jets’ meltdown Sunday against the Dolphins. A commercial showed a pleasant, brick-walled little pizza-and-pasta-type eatery, like you’d find in the artsy section of any city. The proprietress of Elizabeth’s, as I think the place was named, is offering samples of her newest item, a pizza made with all-natural ingredients. Customers rave about it.

Then Elizabeth reveals she didn’t make the pie. The camera cuts to a Pizza Hut delivery guy, carrying a stack of the chain’s new pizza, The Natural.

Okay, maybe the spot was a bit hokey, and a complete rip-off of the old Folgers Coffee commercial (persons of a younger vintage could probably find it on YouTube, mixed in with videos of jousts, barbershop quartets and other cultural phenomenon of that pre-historic time). But it got across the message that this was a pizza made with a whole-wheat crust, additive-free sauce and cheese, and “all-natural” pepperoni and sausage (i.e., both are free of nitrates, nitrites or other nasty-sounding preservatives). The message stressed that the sauce was made from vine-ripened tomatoes without any added sugar. It’s a convincing bid for validity.

Clearly, this is not your Folgers drinker’s pizza.

There’s nothing about Pizza Hut being the first mega-sized restaurant chain to offer an all-natural product. After all, who cares about that sort of huckster-ism.

And it wasn’t about price, though the spot did indicate the pies sell for $11.99 (a “rustic” version, with whole tomato slices) and $9.99 (the basic pie).

No, the hook is clearly the all-natural aspect. As that sensibility has gone mainstream, convincing consumers that “natural” is better, many would-be converts were likely frustrated by the lack of access to reasonably priced examples. They likely wouldn’t have found an all-natural pizza in the corner joint. And places that carried such a pie may have come across as too nuts-and-berry.

I’m betting Pizza Hut has found a true sweet spot. Of course, that’s easy to say when you consider all the year-end predictions that health and wholesomeness will have a profound impact on restaurant menus in 2009. The National Restaurant Association, for instance, cited “nutrition/health” as Number 11 on its list of hot trends for the new year.

The Natural, which has been in test for eons, follows the rollout earlier in the year of the Tuscani line of takeout and delivery pastas, in my estimation the restaurant industry’s best new product of 2009. In the latest estimate by Yum executives, the $12.99 trays of pasta, each of which feeds four, have generated in excess of $100 million in sales since their introduction in April.

That adeptness at reading the market may be what the auto industry needs to come up with the next Mustang, SUV or small pickup.

Since we last met...

Sorry if I sound a little rusty. Since Nation’s Restaurant News laid me off Tuesday, I’ve not been blogging, at least about the restaurant business (though I have been doodling about my new status at Pink-slipped). I figured I’d clear some of the cobwebs by offering a few observations about the industry’s week that was:

Pretty soon T.G.I. Friday’s is going to start giving away living room sets with every meal you order. The casual chain’s frequent-guest program, Give Me More Stripes, started out with the usual bonuses for heavy traffic. Then it tried to sweeten the deal by throwing a free helping of chips and dip into the mix. Now the sector’s granddaddy is adding the whipped cream of a free dessert to any card carrier who visits a unit next weekend and buys an entree. I’m holding out for a steak-knives offer.

Taco Bell president Greg Creed has cajones bellgrande. First the chain proves it’s a badass by dissing 50 Cent. Last summer it suggested the mega-star reprise a Chihuahua’s role by serving as an unlikely pitchman for the Bell. Change your name to 79 Cent, 89 Cent or 99 Cent, the home office publicly offered, and we might be able to come through with bling-bling—a $10,000 payment to the charity of your choice [Thugs Without Bullets, perhaps? Teeth Grills for the Disadvantaged?). The proposal was put forth just as Taco Bell was rolling out a new value menu, an event that may not have snagged much publicity on its own. But Taco Bell tweaking a nasty mother like 50 Cent? Big news, dog.

50 Cent, the only rapper whose music I refuse to let my wife play when I’m in the car, responded with a lawsuit. He may try hard (and convincingly) to come off as a gangsta in the hood, but he’s a brilliant businessman who’s not going to let his name be used gratis as part of a publicity ploy.

Taco Bell should’ve been grateful that the response wasn’t a drive-by. But instead of dropping the matter, it filed a blistering defense that accused the Gangsta Formerly Known as Curtis James Jackson III of not being able to take a joke.

Indeed, the Sept. 19 court filing, brought to light yesterday by the gossip site TMZ was one big bitch-slap (Fast Company called it “counter-blathering.”) Taco Bell alleged in its filed response that 50 Cent nee Jackson “has a well-publicized track record of making threats, starting feuds and filing lawsuits,” and that his suit was merely an attempt to “burnish his gangsta rapper persona.”

“Instead of responding to Taco Bell's sincere offer in the friendly and humorous spirit in which it was issued,” the suit reads, “Jackson launched an aggressive, offensive attack on Taco Bell in the press. In a heavily publicized sound bite, Jackson threatened legal action against Taco Bell stating, "When my legal team is finished with them, Taco Bell is going to have a new
corporate slogan: 'We messed with the bull and got the horns.'"

The filing—technically an “affirmative defense”--disputes or denies each on of 50 Cents’ assertions in turn. It then asks the court hearing the action to dismiss it and make the the rapper pay Taco Bell’s legal fees.

A heads up to Creed: Remember Tupac, my man.

Just think ‘pizza’ and your delivery order will be placed. Maybe we’re not there yet, but the major delivery chains are certainly inching closer to that Isaac Asimov-ian vision. Domino’s, a leader in online ordering, added the option last week of letting TiVo users put in for a pie via the set-top box. Papa John’s announced that it would try to protect IM fanatics from malnutrition by allowing them to buy a delivered pizza without leaving Facebook, an option that Pizza Hut started added in mid-Oct.

So, let us review. Want to order a pizza? You can now do it via your phone (cell or landline), computer, Facebook account, TiVo, video game, or text-messaging capability.

My money’s on Pizza Hut as the first to accept brainwave orders. The chain should just hope it doesn’t intercept any that were beamed by 50 Cent at its sister brand.