By Steve Moran
Yes, really . . . This is an amazing story.
Dominos’ thrived during the pandemic. They were already set to deliver food, they had drivers and already understood the home delivery system. Most local restaurants . . . not so much. And hundreds of thousands of local ‘mom & pop’ restaurants went out of business through no fault of their own.
Many turned to the delivery apps which helped some. But they were forced to pay significant fees to the delivery services, doing great damage and sometimes crushing these local businesses.
An Unconventional Idea
Domino’s knows, has always known, that with rare exceptions people are not going to eat Domino’s alone. And they were committed to helping other restaurants in their local areas stay alive. Here is what they did:
In 5 markets Boston, Phoenix, Louisville, Laredo, and Denver, local franchisees purchased $100,000 in gift cards from “competing” restaurants and gave those gift cards away as a bonus to Domino’s customers. You can check out the story in the video:
After watching the video I got to wondering how senior living communities could do something like this for each other that would make the world a better place.
One crazy idea came to my head. How about a progressive dinner that prospects are invited to. 5 meal items and 5 communities. Invite only prospects, then let them figure out which one is really right for them.
Another would be to work on some service projects together.
Benefits
For Domino’s, there are only two benefits in doing this. To make the world a better place by creating goodwill, and to generate earned media. The YouTube video, which has been live 2 weeks as of the date I am writing this, has three and a half million views.
In senior living, it would do those two things. But more importantly, it would increase people’s confidence in senior living.
