#TBT: Delivering Incomplete Pizzas to Fight Food Waste

Admit it: No other experience is more intense than the time spent between placing a pizza order and the moment when the doorbell finally rings. Seeing the pizza delivery person — who might be drained out of energy especially if you live above the clouds — is like music to your empty stomach. Yet, imagine that instead of receiving a whole pizza, you only get three-quarters of it. What do you do to stop your belly from producing that rumbling sound?

Fortunately, there’s a good explanation for that quarter of missing pizza and we think that your stomach will understand as well. During this week’s #ThrowBrandThursday, we would like to refresh your memory on the advertising agency MullenLowe MENA‘s idea to surprise Pizza2Go restaurant‘s customers with an incomplete pizza.

The “¾ Pizza Box” is the Dubai-based restaurant’s way of tackling food waste. During Ramadan, around 25% of all food is not consumed. Of course, throwing food away isn’t in line with the holiday’s spirit so, in an attempt to make people reconsider how much they actually need to consume and stop this issue from spreading, the restaurant found an ingenious way to make these “leftovers” — which are doomed to land in the bin — continue their lifecycle in a very meaningful way.

OK, so how can an incomplete pizza be used to communicate the seriousness of the problem if it’s… well, incomplete? Exactly Pizza2Go’s point, which removed 25% of its pizza content and the packaging to eliminate the 25% of the food that would have been wasted anyway. Delivering an important message on food waste is not the only impressive thing at this unlikely pizza: For the customers who paid a special price for their order, a quarter of the sales from the ¾ Pizza Box was directed towards Red Crescent — a volunteer humanitarian organization — which used the donations to help those in need.

MullenLowe MENA Regional Executive Creative Director, Paul Banham, explained: “We’re delighted to launch this tasty campaign in partnership with Red Crescent and Pizza2Go and contribute to making the UAE’s only pizza during Ramadan that doesn’t just taste good, it does good too. Can pizza save the world? Well, no, probably not, but it can certainly remind us how to create a better one — one slice at a time.”

The restaurant’s clients weren’t the only ones to consume the delicious initiative, as the “missing slice” made it to social media as well, thus keeping other people fed with creativity for good. Plus, influencers promoted the initiative for free. The pizza was available to order during the holy month of Ramadan in 2021, with the restaurant offering differing assortments to its customers: From classic to vegetarian and vegan options.