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Comment by bko | Hacker News Reader

It appears that millions of Americans prefer Dominos pizza considering they command 25% of the US pizza delivery market and sell 1.5 mm pies a day. Sorry their pizza isn't up to your standards.

http://marketrealist.com/2015/03/dominos-pizza-serving-1-5-m...

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> prefer Dominos

IDK. I order Dominos a lot because I sometimes work weird hours and literally nothing else that delivers is open. That doesn't mean I prefer Dominos. I definitely don't. But it delivers to a large geographic region almost 24/7.

It sounds like you prefer Dominos for their delivery service, hours and geographic region.

It isn't a preference if it is your only choice.

That's an excellent example of a technical truth.

No, people are lazy and poor. Nobody actually likes Dominos.

People who like pizza tend to prefer local varieties that are unique to their area, at least that's been my experience.

Interestingly, Dominos pizza used to be pretty good (or at least, better than it is now) about 30 years ago. The dough was a simple recipe of flour, water, yeast, salt, and a little oil. They used real baking ovens at that time and each pie had to be monitored by a halfway skilled baker who would watch for and pop excessive bubbles in the dough, turn the pie so it would bake evenly, and pull out the pie when it was done but not burnt (a difference of about 30 seconds time span).

Now they use a conveyor belt convection oven which requires very little skill but it's like baking the pizza under a big hair dryer. It dries out the crust more, and they had to change the dough with additives to reduce bubbles. The result was a lower quality pizza, less flavorful crust, that required less skill to bake. For them a win, I guess.

Are they up to yours?

I agree with the spirit of the poster. Nobody's going to lose sleep with anticipation for a cheaper McDonalds (that delivers!).

I think Domino's pizza is great. I don't think you're the target market for McDonalds but they feed a lot of lower income Americans. If they can reduce costs and help those Americans save a little bit of money, it would be greatly beneficial.

Being a huge pizza nerd, I have to ask, what is domino's pizza great compared to?

There is a nice saying that is apropos - "pizza is like sex, even when it is bad, it is still pretty good."

It's consistent, cheap and fairly good. They re-formulated their pizza a few years ago and it is considerably better.

Pizza is very regional and if you're in an unfamiliar place, you take a risk by going to a small "artisanal" pizzeria. Considering that they have such a large market share, their pizza can't be that if that's what millions of Americans prefer. It's also similar to the style of pizza many American's had growing up. Taste is subjective afterall

I can't imagine any small "artisanal" pizzeria being a "risk," especially if the other option is dominos which is about as big-agro "food product" as you can get.

I've had bad pizzas at locally owned mainstream pizza places. Also good ones. But I can't say I can remember having a legitimately bad pizza at an "artisanal" place. Otoh, Dominos, Sbarro, etc. are in my experience reliable. Reliably sub-par.

Some fast chains like In-n-Out burger are pretty good in my eyes but generally I'll take my chances with reliable looking local food in most cases. I rarely regret it.

I don't buy the low cost argument here, because they don't feed them nutritious food, they prey on them by selling them predominantly high chemical, low nutrition addictive junk food that leads to diabetes and obesity, which is now the leading cause of death. Are we automating doctors next?

I get that everyone in Silicon Valley right now is obsessed with unfictionalizing Snow Crash, but the best way to make cheap food is to buy real food and learn how to cook it. There's a discount grocery store a block away and I frequently buy Actual Food there for prices that even a robot welding machine programmed to move pizzas around can't compete with.

They do feed people nutritious food considering its probably the cheapest most convenient prepared calories you can buy that happens to taste very good. It may come as a shock but a lot of people like McDonalds. McDonalds doesn't care what it sells you, it just sells you what sells best. There is no global conspiracy to make Americans fat. Yes, there is a trade off between eating too much food like McDonalds and early death but that's a trade off people make. No different than the trade off higher income Americans make when they go to boozy brunch and buy homes that they likely can't afford. Are bars serving over-priced artisanal cocktails to upper income Americans "preying" or is lack of autonomy and free will only a feature of those in a lower socio-economic class.

I'm not losing sleep with excitement about rich hipster junk food either, but thanks for the straw man.

Don't pretend this stuff doesn't affect me. People "free willing to choose" to ruin their health on trash food (among other things) drives up the cost of everyone's health insurance, punishing everybody so a few players in the junk food industry can cash in. My insurance now costs 35% of my rent, this is not a minor problem. A similar situation is where Walmart abuses government welfare to underpay their workers. There are social consequences to "innovations" like this that are not exclusively individual.

I get excited to see economic investments put into improving people's health and increasing their longevity, not destroying them mentally and physically with addictive garbage. I'm not saying we make it illegal, but I see no reason to get excited about investing into it. This new company is not innovative in the slightest. It's a continuation of the industrial revolution trying to figure out how to turn plastic into food and make us crave it, while in the process automating out every single last worker.

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