I don’t know about Mom & Pop’s Pizza, but if you call a Domino’s and order 75 pizzas to feed 150 band kids, Domino’s will deliver on time and the kids will eat it.
This is what I don’t understand though. Domino’s is like cardboard, just absolute shit and it pales in comparison to every other chain I can think of. Pizza Hut may not be great, but at least it tastes like pizza. Papa John’s is actually pretty good, if a little pricey.
Domino’s is just awful and pretty close to inedible.
To you. Tastes are relative; it’s never safe to assume that because you hate something, everyone else (or even most people) shares that opinion.
The fact that Domino’s has been very successful suggests that either:
a) a lot of people do like the taste of their food, or
b) a lot of people don’t know any better.
If the vast majority of people agreed that “Domino’s is just awful and pretty close to inedible”, I guarantee you that they would have gone out of business a long time ago.
Domino’s came from Ann Arbor, Michigan. That’s definitely a college town. Their claim to fame was the “30 minutes or less” for delivery.
Ah, La Nova. Mmmm. Mob pizza.
Isn’t the owner of Dominos an ultra right wing more “Catholic than the Pope” guy who is building his own Catholic city somewhere?
That’s the problem. Dominoes is crap…but so is every other place these days ESPECIALLY the little local places.
I thought I was getting old and didn’t like pizza anymore though I loved it when I was younger. I then had a pizza at a local ‘Tin Shed’ tavern and DAAAAAAMMMMMMNN that was good pizza. It was then I realized I hadn’t changed as much as the local drive up/delivery pizza places have lowered their quality (though their prices were just a little lower than Tin Shed…just a little).
(Echoing Least Original User Name Ever) I’m guessing was the “30 minutes or it’s free” ads. The combination of quick and potentially free was hard to pass up.
Outside of this thread I have never met anyone who would go to Domino’s unless it was the only pizza option for miles.
And even in this thread, most of the people “rallying” behind Domino’s are saying that it is only acceptable because it was the only pizza place in their delivery zone. Consumer laziness is a prime motivator for business success, I agree.
Around my neck of the woods however, Papa John’s and Pizza Hut (and a variety of great local places) have practically muscled Domino’s out.
You must go to Eastern. Only people there try to call Ypsi, “Ann Arbor”, so they can try to slip an “I go to college in Ann Arbor” into conversation 
Domino’s is certainly not my 1st choice but between Pizza Hut ,Papa Johns and Dominos,I would not even hesitate if given a choice.Hut and Dominos are about the same except for price and reheating quality.Dominos gets the edge on both.Papa Johns is just lousy and way overpriced.
Yes, the Dominos founder is a super Catholic guy. And he founded a town and Catholic college in Florida.
Because most Americans don’t know any better. It’s the same reason Budweiser is the top-selling brand of beer in the U.S. even though it’s crap- because they market the hell out of it and most people drink it because it’s what they’ve heard of, and because they don’t know any better.
Not anymore.
Domino’s is tolerable to me. Papa John’s is better, Pizza Hut is worse. Is Little Ceasar’s still around? Because that was the one pizza that I thought was truly abominable.
I think heavy advertising works, along with the “just good enough” thing mentioned earlier. Advertise everywhere, give yourself a logo and name that everybody recognizes, and unless everybody hates your product, you’ll probably make it. You don’t need a whole lot of people thinking “I really like Domino’s,” you just need enough thinking “I will call Domino’s.”
I used to looove Domino’s when I was a kid. My brother and I ordered it almost every day the first summer we were left home alone when Mom got a job. They had some sort of $5 pizza deal if you ordered in the afternoon.
I remember at some point deciding it was yucky, and then shortly thereafter it closed (don’t worry, we have no less than 10 other places that deliver here now).
I wonder if the quality changed, or my tastes changed?
Even so, “everyone I know” isn’t really a legitimate substitute for “everyone”, unless you seriously have hundreds and hundreds of friends whom you know well enough to know their answer to this question, they’re demographically diverse, and they’re spread out across the U.S.
Dunno if I’d call it “consumer laziness” so much as “lack of other options”.
The “pro-Domino’s” posts (such as they are…I’m not seeing anyone posting, “hey, Domino’s is AWESOME!!!”) seem to be split between, “I don’t like them much, but I don’t have much choice” and “they aren’t great, but they aren’t bad.”
It also has a lot to do with price. You can go into just about any diner or bar and grill style place and get a much better burger than you would at McDonalds. But it might also set you back six bucks. Same thing with Mexican. There are plenty of great mom and pop Mexican restaurants out there. But Taco Bell is cheaper than most of them.
Domino’s is ubiquitous because
(1) It is good
(2) It’s cheap
(3) It is a well-run business (i.e., they are generally consistent with quality, cost, and speed)
These are the same reasons McDonalds are ubiquitous.
In fact, I think the primary reason people consider Domino’s and McDonald’s to be “mediocre” is because their ubiquity defines the baseline. They’re “mediocre” by definition. Imagine a business supplants McDonald’s as the fast food king, due to having slightly better food. If they become as common as McDonald’s is now, people won’t say, “Hey, this stuff is actually pretty good.” Instead, they’ll eventually make the same jokes about that food which they currently make about McDonald’s. It’s a quality treadmill, where relative positioning matters far more than absolute positioning.
If one day the average person lives off of caviar and fine wines, there will be snobs who will wonder how on earth anyone can live on such horrid crap.
I define McDonalds and Domino’s to be mediocre because I find their food horrible. And I’m far from a food snob. The last time I ordered Domino’s (because it was very late and I was very hungry), I couldn’t get two slices down before I threw it away.
You must trust me when I re-iterate that I am not a food snob. I whip up great pots of bachelor chow that would knock a buzzard off a shit-wagon, but I couldn’t force down Domino’s pizza on bet.
Actually, I did a semester at Michigan. I’ve only driven through Ypsi and ridiculed the tower that looks like a penis.
