There are two things people love: animals and pizza. In the winter people especially love penguins, polar bears, chipmunks, and reindeer and enjoy hot pizzas on very cold days. In Japan, Domino's tried to provide customers with a festive idea in honor of the winter season: delivery in the form of reindeer.
Domino's in Japan tried to have reindeer deliver pizzas. No joke. The company announced the idea on November 17 and worked with Hokkaido Delivery Integrated Research Center's team of reindeer breeders to train the reindeer to deliver pizza. The reindeer were equipped with GPS trackers so customers could track the progress of their deliveries. Domino's thought this was a perfect idea in anticipation of a very cold and snowy winter in the country, especially as snow fell in Tokyo for the first time in 54 years.
But the hopes of the company were instantly dashed, as easily broken as Christmas ornaments. Reindeer are not natural-born pizza deliverers and apparently make poor employees. They tried putting pizzas on the animals' backs and then tried to get them to pull sleighs laden with pizzas, neither of which was successful. No Christmas miracles came to make them better workers, so Domino's was forced to scrap their plan on December 1.
So Domino's has decided to incorporate reindeer into their plans in a different way: by dressing their delivery vehicles as the animals. These vehicles have fake fur, ears, plush noses, and giant horns to make them look like these Yuletide animals. The Domino's pizza app in Japan looks like a smiling reindeer with a red nose just like Rudolph. This idea may not be as adorable or magical as real reindeer but is obviously more effective and realistic. There is also no danger of the vehicles take off or eating the pizzas.
Maybe it was for the best. Some people on social media called it animal cruelty while some asked how someone is supposed to tip a reindeer. The reindeer apparently had bad attitudes, charging past customers' houses into fields and throwing the pizzas about on their backs, damaging them.
I don't think Domino's will attempt it again, in Japan or anywhere else. I highly doubt the idea would fly in America. But it was a cute idea and there are a couple of cute videos online of humans trying to train the reindeer (and failing).
