The advent of pizza-ordering apps has made it easy to get a delivery pie that meets your very exacting specifications, without ever interacting with another human being. Apps have also made it easy to make a complete shambles of your order if you don’t know what you’re doing. Case in point: the mom who just forgot to get any cheese and sauce on her Domino’s pepperoni.
My mom used the dominos app for the first time and forgot to get sauce and cheese. Dead pic.twitter.com/cAhd1ymMsg
— bj stead (@whosrobertseed) July 7, 2017
This plain bread circle with pepperoni slices casually resting on it, not adhered to the pizza by any kind of cheese or tomato product, is breathtaking. Not since None Pizza with Left Beef has an app-enabled pizza order been this beautiful and iconic. The difference is that None Pizza With Left Beef was an intentional joke that was only possible because of online ordering. You can call a pizza place and tell them you want beef on the “left” side of your “none” pizza, but it won’t make any sense. The joke only worked because those options were actually available on the website.
But the plain pepperoni pizza—is it even a pizza, or is it more of a flatbread at this point?—ordered by B.J. Stead‘s mom was no joke; she just didn’t specify that she wanted sauce and cheese. An employee taking a phone order probably would have double-checked to make sure she actually intended to buy this ridiculous pie before shipping it out, but the app is only as good as its human inputs. This is a weird enough order that there should probably be an “are you sure?” dialogue before they let an unsuspecting mom pay for it.
No funny blooper on the internet can escape interaction with #brands, though, and in Domino’s failure, DiGiorno spotted a public relations opportunity. The famous “it’s not delivery” brand tweeted at Stead, telling him to delete the app because they had him covered.
Delete the app and DM us.
— DiGiorno (@DiGiorno) July 8, 2017
Stead jokingly asked for “free pizza for a year, pls,” and although he didn’t quite get that, he did get 10 free pizzas, with cheese and sauce included.
Y'all @DiGiornoPizza wasn't messing around pic.twitter.com/QOM6G7Av57
— bj stead (@whosrobertseed) July 13, 2017
It’s not delivery, but as DiGiorno pointed out in a self-congratulatory tweet, they did “deliver.” Nice.
B.J. Stead is in a band or something, I guess, but on Twitter he’ll forever be known as the guy whose mom got no sauce.
Domino’s did do one thing right in all of this, though: At least the dry pepperoni pizza they sent was boneless.