In what has to rank as the most expensive PR stunt in the history of mankind, Domino’s Pizza has announced plans to open a branch on the surface of the moon.
“We started thinking about this project last year, although we have not yet determined when the restaurant might open,” Domino’s spokesman Tomohide Matsunaga told the UK’s Telegraph newspaper. “In the future, we anticipate there will be many people living on the moon, astronauts who are working there and, in the future, citizens of the moon.”
In sum, Domino’s and construction firm Maeda Corp estimate that the project will cost an astonishing $21.7 billion USD. Yes, with a “b.”
To offset these insane costs, the companies plan to mine lunar mineral deposits to create cement used in the construction, though it is still estimated that 70 tons of material and pizza making gear will have to be ferried to the moon aboard 15 rockets.
It should be noted that there is something of a precedent for extrastellar ‘za. In 2001, Pizza Hut delivered a batch of pizzas to Russian cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station.
It should also be noted that this plot is not a company-wide effort, requiring funds from throughout the Domino’s pizza empire. Instead, this plan was hatched solely by Domino’s Japanese branch.
While I’m still not convinced that this idea has actually been fleshed out to any extent, this does raise two interesting questions.
First, is there really no better use for that cash than opening a restaurant that is utterly unable to live up to the firm’s “30 minutes or less” delivery standards for anyone but an intensely insane Sam Rockwell?
Second, if this scheme is a thing that Domino’s Japan is actually capable of putting together, where exactly are they coming up with this kind of cash? Roughly speaking, that’s enough money to offer 17 pizzas to every single person in Japan.
Yes, even the thought of this place is a PR coup, but what happened to the Japan that funneled all of its resources into outfitting angsty teens with giant mechanized battle suits? Pepperoni is no substitute for a Macross missile storm.
Source: Telegraph
