Maybe we've been waiting a long time for a corporation, any corporation, to make a self-flagellating apology to us, hat in hand. Maybe it's that this is a city where underdogs have enjoyed precious little sympathy -even if the underdog is a corporation. I started to feel a little sorry for the underdog. An obvious marketing trick, maybe, but a brave one.Ĭompare that with, say, my local pizza shop where surly men in stained aprons fling slices at me while trying to look down my shirt. It was so eager, so self-deprecatory, it was almost revolutionary (for a corporate chain). The ad campaign was charmingly earnest, featuring apologetic pizza chefs expressing their commitment to developing better-tasting food, begging consumers to give Domino's another chance. The company could have gone all-out frat-boy retro and cornered the campus market, but instead it seemed genuinely stung, puzzled about the rejection, and committed to reversing its fortunes: "There comes a time when you know you've gotta make a change," said CEO Patrick Doyle in a series of ads themed "Domino's Pizza Turnaround" (the company has a four and a half-minute video on its YouTube channel dedicated to the campaign). In 2009, Domino's came in last in a consumer taste survey alongside fellow pizza relic Chuck-e-Cheese. What mortal will even be alive at 11 AM tomorrow, let alone hungry? In the wan quiet hours after midnight, when your head is buzzing and the sky is ruddy with Martian incandescence, hunger becomes surreal and urgent. They will begin taking orders at 11 AM tomorrow, the website says. You check out GrubHub or Seamless, only to see a list of restaurants in your proximity that are utterly closed. And maybe having a drink, and probably getting hungry. If you are a food delivery driver or an actuary or a bike messenger, you get to go do something else come 11 PM, as well you should.īut for another part, if you're a writer, or a web designer, or an app programmer, or a member of any other precarious freelance professions named by the euphemism creative class, you might actually end up working at 1 AM. This may be the city that never sleeps, but what we do in the weird after-midnight hours rarely resembles work either. "Why do you eat Domino's?!"īecause it's the only place that still delivers at 2 AM for one part. "You live in New York!" those same friends rejoin. It's big.Įven though I once attended a reading by Colin " Slice Harvester" Hagendorf, the guy who spent a year trying every slice of pizza in New York City, and even though I bought his zine and I had it signed, and even though I can tell everyone else where to get a proper, broad-bellied and mozzarella-loaded slice of authentic New York pizza off the top of my head, and even though I gloat a little inside when my friends come to town and sigh eagerly over the opportunity to eat a Real Slice, even despite all that: I've eaten more Domino's Pizza than I have any other slice available on this island. Speaking as a New Yorker, I have a confession.
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