Domino's Offers To Fix Your Town's Pothole Epidemic

Potholes aren't just annoying and potentially damaging to your car, they're also bad news for your pizza. A car hits a bump, and suddenly cheese is stuck to the roof of the cardboard box, or slips off the side completely in a sort of mozzarella landslide. Which is why Domino's today announced an online contest in which people can vote to have the pizza chain give money to their town for pothole repairs.

At pavingforpizza.com, customers can enter their zip codes and nominate their municipalities to receive a "paving grant" from Domino's. According to the announcement, Domino's already has helped fill eight potholes in Bartonville, Texas; 40 in Milford, Delaware; 150 in Athens, Georgia; and five in Burbank, California. What's the catch? To nominate your town, you'll need to enter your email address and zip code; in 2018, we all know this kind of customer data is like catnip for corporations.

But really, we have to give credit where credit's due, and this promotion is a smart one. Literally no one on earth likes potholes, so Domino's is uniting customers around a 100-percent universally reviled enemy. Pavingforpizza.com also features a "pizza damage report" video module that lets website visitors watch as a pizza rattles around in its box over bumpy terrain. (If watching an in-transit pizza around lunch time doesn't have you already considering dialing for a pie, you have greater self-restraint than I do.)

Good work, Domino's. Next step: team up with this Michigan pizzeria that offered a snow-plow-and-pizza-delivery deal to take that service nationwide next winter.