Lemonade and pizza are a great combination for lunch and for free-market solutions.
Country Time Lemonade has announced it will pay the legal fees for children who are cited for operating unlicensed lemonade stands. Similarly, Domino’s Pizza has begun filling potholes to ensure smoother deliveries with its “Paving for Pizza” initiative.
Two private organizations taking their own strides to improve their own communities, exposing just how flawed centralized government is.
The idea behind Domino’s plan is that pizza deliveries are endangered by poorly maintained roads, and Domino’s wants to fix that: It plans to “save your good pizza from these bad roads.”
The initiative to save perfectly cheesy pizzas has already started in Burbank, Calif.; Bartonville, Texas; Milford, Del.; and Athens, Ga. Distressed pizza consumers can nominate their town to be considered for Domino’s road repairs.
While to some it is simply clever marketing, there is also a silver lining of policy that we must not overlook, akin to the discovery of cheese in a stuffed crust, if you will. Domino’s is a private company incentivized by profit to find ways to sell its product. What incentive do governments have to fix the roads? They are clearly not driven by the desire for punctual pizza deliveries.
Country Time’s new plan to protect the age-old tradition of lemonade stands (and kids’ rights) is not only good for local communities, but for its brand too. Kids are being fined for starting lemonade stands without permits, leading to angry parents and lots of unsold lemonade on scorching summer days.
I’m not one to be tempted to follow the exploits of a corporate lemonade manufacturer, but here I am, intrigued by what Country Time is doing. It’s spending $500,000 this year, but the free advertisement it’s received from public praise has already been worth far more than that. What an answer to the idiom: When life gives you lemons …
Combine the efforts of pizza and lemonade companies and you get the impetus for policy: change. Local governments don’t like negative publicity for their rules that shut down harmless lemonade stands and make kids cry. Shining a light on this issue makes it much more likely that the rules will ultimately change for the better; no one benefits from the government shutting down a child’s lemonade stand.
Likewise, Domino’s is bringing to light not only the need to fix our roads, but also alternatives to government-funded infrastructure programs that perpetually block two lanes every morning on your way to work. Simultaneously, Domino’s now has people hooked to its Twitter feed, paying attention to see if their town is the next selected; it’s cheap marketing as easy as a piece of cake (or in this case, pizza).
All across the country, road infrastructure is crumbling thanks largely to misused tax dollars intended for road repairs that wind up in general funds instead. This is part of the reason why steady gas tax increases over the past several years have not improved road conditions.
When governments don’t manage tax funds properly, who will step up and ensure that roads remain driveable? Apparently Domino’s.
In deciding where to order a pizza, Domino’s has skillfully gained a slight advantage by putting itself into the public consciousness in a notable way.
Pizza and lemonade go well together and, as it turns out, so do their marketing campaigns. Both of these plans show that incentives matter and can benefit both businesses and consumers alike. We are entering a new age in marketing, where it is now about putting your money where your mouth is and doing things to indirectly benefit your customers.
Paige Lambermont is a political science major at American University. She is also a media ambassador for Young Americans for Liberty.
