Domino’s Pizza used to promise delivery within 30 minutes. They dropped their guarantee in 1993 because it led drivers to be too aggressive, and they lost a lawsuit to a crash victim.
Growing up a professional ballplayer made minor news picking up the Airfone on a plane, dialing Domino’s, and declaring “let’s see you deliver this pizza in half an hour!”
Papa Murphy’s in Anchorage, Alaska doesn’t deliver within 30 minutes, but that’s because they deliver by plane. If you live in remote Alaska, as far out as Prudhoe Bay 855 miles away, and you want pizza what else can you do?
“They get flown out frozen,” Williams said. “Once the customer gets them it takes two to three days, depending on weather. They defrost them, it takes just a couple hours on the counter.”
…“All of our pizzas are made fresh in house, we grate our cheese every day, process our veggies every day, make our dough every day. So it’s all extremely fresh product that we make and we flash freeze them,” Williams said.
The idea started when customers would call asking them to bring pizzas to the airport, and customers would arrange the air cargo themselves. While shipping eats into margins – they offer free shipping! – the pizza shop generally fulfill big orders (people don’t just order one pizza at a time).
Airport Pizza in Nome, Alaska apparently used to do something similar, but their website now says they only deliver throughout Nome.
Believe it or not, this doesn’t just happen in Alaska. According to Nigeria’s Minister of Agriculture Nigerians are ordering pizza from London and having it delivered on British Airways.
As someone who used to live in AK, my first question would be which airport: Merrill Field, the general aviation airport in N Anchorage or Ted Steven’s International in SW Anchorage.
Flippers Pizza in Central Florida is also doing this throughout the continental US. Just new, during COVID, but it kind of looks like they are going to continue as their restaurants all seem to be fully open again now.
For a few years, Domino’s in St Maarten delivered pizzas to folks on Saba and Sint Eustatius via Winnair.
https://www.saba-news.com/winair-and-dominos-celebrate-3-years-pizza-delivery-by-air/
Papa Murphy’s pizza (unless this location is different) is not served hot. It is pre-made and you heat it up once you get home. Pizza is fine and no problem with this business model but does change, IMHO, the logistics of remote delivery since you aren’t delivering a hot, fresh pizza as people may expect from the title.