By registering you agree to our privacy policy, terms & conditions and to receive occasional emails from Ad Age. You may unsubscribe at any time.

Are you a print subscriber? Activate your account.

By Keira Wingate - 43 min 19 sec ago

By Abhik Choudhury - 1 hour 13 min ago

By Adrianne Pasquarelli - 1 hour 43 min ago

By Judann Pollack - 9 hours 58 min ago

By Abhik Choudhury - 1 hour 13 min ago

By Simon Dumenco - 18 hours 5 min ago

By Parker Herren - 1 day 12 hours ago

By E.J. Schultz - 19 hours 25 min ago

By Judann Pollack - 9 hours 58 min ago

By E.J. Schultz - 1 day ago

By Parker Herren - 2 days 13 hours ago

Domino's is incentivizing customers to utilize online ordering and carryout with a $3 discount on a future carryout order, presenting it as a “tip” for customers who deliver their own.

The “Carryout Tips” promotion, which begins this week and runs through May 22, is designed to provide the pizza brand with a greater mix of efficient and profitable sales. It is also aimed at supporting more frequent orders, while encouraging consumers to order through its digital properties, which can provide valuable first-party data. The promotion comes as the chain gears up for heavy volume accompanying the Super Bowl and while a nationwide labor crunch has pressured companies to find enough workers to meet service demands.

RSVP for Ad Age’s Super Bowl event on Feb. 8 at AdAge.com/InDepthSuperBowl.

This is especially an acute issue for Domino's, which has bucked an industrywide trend of outsourcing home delivery to third-party services like Grubhub and Uber Eats.

In a fall conference call reviewing the chain’s fiscal third quarter, President and CEO of Dominos Richard Allison suggested that labor pressures were a headwind to same-store sales, but that carryout was a growth driver.

“I’d just highlight the carryout business will continue to be a focus of ours given the significantly lower amount of labor involved in those transactions, and the fact that’s been a big growth driver for us anyway," Allison said. "We’re going to continue pushing there.”

Two new commercial spots from the creative agency WorkInProgress play on the notion that carryout customers are effectively delivery drivers for the brand. In “Transformation,” a woman carrying home a pizza becomes a uniformed driver and her car morphs into a branded Dominos delivery vehicle until she arrives at her door and changes back again as she steps into the home. A second spot, called “Earned It,” shows a man overcoming the various challenges that couriers face—like parking lot congestion, crosswalk traffic and lawn sprinklers.

The $3 discount comes in the form of a code that can applied to another order made within one week, sparking repeat business. The coupons require a minimum order of $5.

“Domino’s carryout tips come just in time for the biggest football game of the year, which is also one of the busiest days of the year for pizza,” Art D’Elia, Domino’s EVP and CMO, said in a statement. “Domino’s typically sells about 2 million pizzas on football's favorite Sunday, so if you’re throwing a party and feeding hungry fans, make it a carryout order and get tipped.”

Jon Springer is a Senior Reporter for Ad Age, covering food and CPG marketing. He formerly covered the food retail industry for Winsight and Supermarket News, and is a former sports and features writer for The Cecil Whig, a daily newspaper in Elkton, Md.