Fun With Carbs

Domino’s Pizza has long been the pizza’s industry’s punch line. Never mind its low prices and 30-minute delivery promise (and 4 a.m. closing time in some markets), it’s never really been able to move past public criticism of its crust, sauce and cheese. When I graduated from college seven years ago, I promised myself I’d never, ever eat it again. And that was well before I discovered the existence of New Haven pizza.

Last year, the chain suffered another blow when two Conover, N.C. employees filmed themselves defiling ingredients (sticking cheese up their noses, passing gas on the pizza) while they prepared orders. The video made it to YouTube, where it went viral, receiving more than a million views. The two were arrested and slapped with a felony charge of delivering prohibited foods. And Domino’s found itself facing a huge PR disaster.

Now the chain is trying a new tactic: starting over from scratch. Chefs devised a new crust, flavored with butter, garlic and herbs. The sauce received a blast of heat with red pepper, and the cheese is now 100% ‘real mozzarella’ with a ‘hint of provolone.’

Did the fancy new upgrades pay off? Mixed feelings posted by Twitter users. Here’s a sampling.

“Tried it last night, was very impressed!”
“#newpizza tastes like a ball of jarred garlic rolled in a pile of sugar. You need to fire that head chef.”
“new sauce sucked”
“it was so good, I called Dominos and praised their good work. Their number has been added to my speed dial.”
“I am still paying for that #newpizza in heartburn, 48 hours later. That was SO not worth it by any stretch of the imagination.”

And the campaign goes on…beyond just owning up to the recipe’s shortcomings, Domino’s is going guerilla by delivering pizza “directly to their biggest critics.” What a surprise! The critics ‘loved it!’ (Listen, I worked in a newsroom. Trust me, there’s something about free food that magically makes it delicious.)

No, I haven’t tried the new Domino’s. I admit I’m intrigued…but not enough to break my post-grad edict. Maybe they should have offered a limited-time freebie deal – with a money-back guarantee, that is.

Have you tried it? Let us know!

As a online content producer (formerly full-time, now freelance) for courant.com,  I know a little bit about website usability. And as a foodie, I spend a lot of time on restaurant sites. I’m the type that needs to picture my meal before I get to the table, so I love to look at menus in advance and plan what I want to eat.

When I’m trying a new restaurant, I usually look first at its website, and then cross-reference at a user-review site like Yelp or Urbanspoon. But sometimes I can only get information from said user-review sites – because the restaurant has no web presence.

While I’ve never owned a restaurant, or even worked in one, I’ll be the first to say that this is absolutely unacceptable. In 2010, any new business should rely on a website to serve as its primary marketing tool. Today’s foodies, especially younger ones, go right to the web for their restaurant information. Restaurateurs cannot afford to miss out on this kind of traffic.

However, sometimes restaurant websites are so bad that you wished they hadn’t even tried. Here are the most common offenders:

1.) The All-Flash Site. Sure, it spins and dances and does all kinds of neat tricks. But if your splash page takes more than 30 seconds to load, I’ve gotten up and gone to the kitchen for a snack and forgotten I ever wanted to go to your restaurant. Your loss.

2.) The Site With The Huge PDF Menus. I consider this a worse offense than Flash. One, it’s lazy. You’re just uploading a static document, and more often than not, it contains your specials from two seasons ago. It’s January and I don’t want your Summer Watermelon Rum Punch. Is it too much to ask to get regular updates?

Two, sometimes these PDFs are close to the size of an audio file, and they shut down my entire browser. If your menu causes Firefox to crash, you’re not getting my business.

3.) The Site Created In A Web Design 101 Class – In 1996. You know. Geocities style. Times New Roman font, primary-colored backgrounds, as many animated GIF images as someone could possibly toss on a page. Sadly, to me, these are preferable to the PDF menu.

To  me, a good restaurant site is functional, regularly updated, aethestically pleasing and has an easy-to-access HTML-based menu. The most savvy restaurants also have strong presences on social networks like Facebook and Twitter, sharing daily specials and promotions with ‘fans’ and ‘followers.’ I understand that restaurants don’t typically have in-house web people to handle the updates, so it’s important to get this real-time information out on these platforms. And when you think about it, those reach more people than your main site, anyway.

Thoughts? Any web designers or restaurateurs want to weigh in?