From Domino’s to Locavores

The Starbucks Effect could describe the turn of fortune which befell the company after it schooled the world in coffee and its students graduated to become local-roast, fair-trade, organic coffee connoisseurs. The alumni moved on from Starbucks to local cafes with house-roated fair-trade beans and pastries from local bakeries. Domino’s Pizza may be unwittingly teaching locavorism in the same way.

A caricature of local food made explicit with frozen Canada and desert Mexico.

Domino’s has launched a campaign touting the origins of its ingredients, “Behind the Pizza.” The result is a sort of nationwide farmville, with cheese from Wisconsin and mushrooms from California. They even specify the names of the farms, illustrated as idyllic little operations on green knolls (not to scale disclaimer). You get points as you educate yourself online.

Not getting bogged down by spin—the farms are surely not adorable and merely examples—this is an interesting campaign to build awareness and promote real, local food. Strangely however, by noting that mushrooms in their pizza come from California—when they could come from truly local, and therefore, better, farms—forces the audience to question their ‘local’ pitch. Pointing it out on a map makes it all the more obvious.

I love that they’re promoting real food, but can only hope that like Starbucks, Domino’s creates a national awareness of food origins to the extent that their audience matures into locavores. Here’s hoping.