Nearly two years ago, Domino’s admitted its customers were right when they said that the crust tasted like cardboard and the sauce tasted like ketchup. It was a bold move to admit these flaws, but the company’s ad agency pushed them into this bare-all campaign.
I actually hadn’t eaten Domino’s since 2008 or 2009, and this campaign didn’t tempt me at all. However, I ended the hold-out last week to not only try the reformulated pizza but also the supposedly improved cheese bread.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, well … shame on me. In a nutshell, the pizza was still forgettable, and the cheese bread actually was worse than before.
Besides the lack of flavor, I mainly didn’t like the pizza because the cheese had re-solidified, so I was essentially eating lukewarm pizza. It didn’t help that I knew it was going to be lukewarm: Domino’s online delivery system told me the pizza was “checked for perfection” at 4:34 p.m. but not out for delivery until 4:58 p.m., meaning it sat for 24 min. in the store. Even if that’s a normal amount of time, a customer shouldn’t know that their order is just sitting there.
The cheese bread, which is also now stuffed with cheese, lost the garlic-y and greasy-in-a-good-way flavor of its previous incarnation. Plus, the two ends pieces had almost no cheese on it, which meant I got to experience the flavorless bread. Very, very disappointing.
The only thing I enjoyed was the online delivery system. I’ve previously noted that Toppers Pizza has the worst online delivery system–the site frequently stalls, which means you have to reload the page and start over. Meanwhile, Pizza Hut and Papa John’s have no-frills-but-functional systems.
Domino’s uses one of six different themes (e.g. nerdy professor, romantic, etc.) to illustrate your pizza being made. First it told me the time my order was taken, who was preparing it and then when it went in the oven. You can leave a note of encouragement during this process, such as “You’re my favorite Domino’s Team Members.”
Finally, as mentioned, it tells you the time the pizza was checked and then out for delivery. Once the other pizza chains copy this online delivery feature, Domino’s will have absolutely nothing over them.
