MINNEAPOLIS — A lot of small businesses have been trying to just stay afloat right now. And when you can find joy and humor in the hardest days, well, that's a win! A local pizza joint did just that.
“How do we keep our guests safe? How do we ensure that our staff remains safe?” asks Peter Campbell, owner of Red Wagon Pizza.
The folks at Red Wagon, in Minneapolis, shifted gears pretty quickly back in March. They shut down the dining room, filled it up with boxes, and figured out how to make your pickup contactless.
“You come in the parking lot, you call a number, you open your trunk, and we place the food inside your trunk for you,” says Campbell.
So, when a national pizza company put out an ad claiming they'd finally figured it out…it didn't sit well with the Red Wagon Crew.
“I was like, I'm pretty confident my team figured this out on like day 2 of the pandemic,” says Campbell.
Peter told his team, and they said, nope, not on our watch!
They wrote a script and shot a mock ad as kind of a team-building experience. You can watch the entire ad here.
“Figuring out when we had time to go out into the parking lot and throw pizzas at each other's cars and whose car was going to be volunteered to do that,” says Jill Drum Steffens, who spearheaded the whole project.
“The idea that so many of our days are the same, the same, the same, and we're not seeing the same guests that we used to see, the same type of human interactions, and the same kind of joy and laughter so, it was kind of bringing that together with our very small team,” says Steffens.
“I was so proud of the team and I think it's hysterical,” says Campbell.
Laughter, after all, is the best medicine. Oh, and pizza helps too.