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Rick Duris and "Jesus Pizza"

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RickDuris

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Hi all,

I have an idea which is one which may make someone in the pizza business a lot of money.

I’m calling it “Jesus Pizza”.

Candidly, I’m new here on this forum. And I am not in the pizza business. I am a marketing consultant. I have no desire to be in the pizza business. So I am giving this idea away.

What if, just what if, there was a pizzeria that made pizza where one out of ten of them, or one out of 20 of them had the picture of Jesus somehow showing up “miraculously”? If a customer bought one and there was image of Jesus, that pizza would be free to the customer.

This idea is inspired by eBay promotions where people see Jesus on sorts of things and auction them off. Toast, salami, hamburgers, whatever.

Those promotions/auctions usually end in the hundreds of dollars. There was a toast one the other day where it was bought for $555!

That’s incredible to me. There’s a market there. 😃

Now let me offer a couple of promotional ideas regarding this:
  1. You could hire Father Guido Sarducci from Saturday Night Live fame. He recently gave a blessing at the Comedy Central John Stewart’s Event in Washington. You can have him come and bless your establishment, bless the dough and other ingredients, all sorts of things.
  2. You could also offer various other pizza like Madonna pizza. (Vegetarian) Or Mary Magdalene pizza. (That would be fun! I wonder what that would taste like…) You could so much fun with this. You could go crazy with all sorts of ideas…
  3. Holidays like Easter and Christmas and Lent, oh my goodness. You can go wild with special events.
  4. You can offer wine and bread and holy water blessed by the local priests and pastors. If you think I am kidding here, trust me, I am not. (I am a firm believer that holy water has spiritual qualities that can not measured.)
  5. You can be sponsored by local churches and they’ll have their events at your place. I think it would really cool.
  6. One more idea: I don’t know if you can do this but you can have it so that Jesus is actually on the underside of the crust/dough using a special cooking platter.
I am giving this idea away. I’ll tell you why:

I have friend here in California. His name is Jim. And Jim wants to open up his own pizzeria. But he doesn’t like this idea. He’s an atheist. It repels him. I have no problem with that. But I believe he is in the minority.

I do have have a problem that this is a good idea. And I want to see somebody run with it. And make money with it.

Just imagine having everybody looking for Jesus on their pizza when get it.

Obviously, there might be holes in logic because I’m not in the business.

Unless I miss my guess, somebody’s going to do this–big time. If there’s a Godfathers’ Pizza, they can have this.
PS: What do I want as compensation? Only this: Bragging rights. I have a funny feeling the universe is going to run with this idea. Please let me know if you’re going to do it. I can be reached at:
rick92651 at gmail.com.

Minimally, it would be something interesting to test. Especially in Catholic neighborhoods.

PPS: One more idea: DO NOT try to open Mohammed Pizza. Muslims don’t like that. That would be bad. And there would be backlash.

PPPS: And if somebody has already run with this. All I can say is “Darn.”
 
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Either your sense of humor is even more off the wall than mine, or you are a marketing consultant with a hungry family.

If this is a genuine idea, think about it for a minute. Religious people would not patronize you if you mock their beliefs. Non religious people seem to get offended by religious references. You would manage to alienate almost the entire community.

I’m just sayin’

Rick
 
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Appreciate your reply, Rick G.

I think it’s something worthy of testing. And I think someone’s going to run with it. Someone has already registered jesuspizza.com, so I know the universe has hold of the idea. And I’ve already gotten three emails from folks here. And it’s only been 15 minutes.

So you tell me?

Like you say, if you think about it, Father Guido Sarducci has been around how long? Some would consider his antics, his character, even today, blasphemous/heresy. But they don’t. They enjoy and appreciate and laugh.

Maybe my “positioning” of the idea may be a bit too “over the top.” Admittedly, I may be pushing the boundaries. But that’s my nature.

Please don’t condemn for that. I’m contributing something that could work assuming it’s done right. It’s just an idea. No more. No less. I have a couple ideas like this every day.

Lastly. Go out to eBay. Look for things related to Jesus.

For goodness sake, they have a toaster that puts the image of Jesus on your toast! They sell it for $30 when you can buy a toaster at Walmart for $10. Maybe $8. And Walmart buys it for probably $3.

That’s a ten times mark-up! That’s pretty amazing for eBay.

The cost or execution is not the issue. All I’m saying is there’s a marketing opportunity here, one that blows away the competition and positions your business uniquely and enduringly.

There’s an idea here. My communication admittedly may not be perfect, I understand. But you can’t fault me for trying. 🙂
  • Rick Duris
PS: I was born and raised a Catholic. This isn’t about insulting or mocking anybody. Catholics, even the most fervent, know how to laugh and smile. And if you had a pizza place like this? You would have a lot of that.
 
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I doubt anyone here would ever entertain this idea, to make it look as if it was one of those "jesus on a grill cheese thing’… Is clearly poking fun at something that many people believe in…

As I was taught by my mother back in the restaurant we owned in Italy… “Non si parla mai religione e politica in negozio”. (never speak politics and religion in the shop)
 
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Well, I am now up to seven emails so far.

As my friend/attorney says “We shall see what we shall see.”

May not pan out to anything. (No pun intended.)

I appreciate everybody’s ideas for and against. Thank you.
  • Rick Duris
PS: I don’t hang out here on this forum at all. So this will be my last post unless I come with another pizza business idea that I want to give away. Feel free to keep sending your emails.

PPS: I did have another pizza idea recently. Small idea. Suited especially for traditional Italian pizzerias. I was in a pizzeria recently called Cucina Luciana’s. Something like that. Never been there before. Great place. Very nice people. Wonderful pizza.

I advocated when the transaction was consummated, they say “Gratis.” Instead of “Thank you.” It’s elicits a very unique and warming response.
 
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jad135… Mohammad may be spoken of but never depicted in a drawing or real life image. Even in official Islamic drawings…he is drawn without features on his face…only as a body with a blurry outline of where a head should be. Drawing him is one of the highest ways to insult him in the religion of Islam. Considered worse than burning a Koran. So best not too find him on your pizza!!! :shock:
 
Sorry, I’m back. I couldn’t help myself. I just had an idea… or at least a memory to share about this:

This post is for Italian Mike, and whoever else who may think this idea may be too over the top or religiously inappropriate.

Consider Italian Restarant Buca DiBeppo.

Inside, it’s ornamented in all things Catholic and Italian. Consider “The Pope Room”:


I have been there, and it’s amazing the lengths they’ve gone to. From the video, you can see a bust of the Pope prominently displayed in the middle of a turnstyle on a large beautiful dinner table. The Pope is ready to be spun around with the food.

Now if THAT isn’t inappropriate, I don’t know what is.

The actual decor has a religious feel to it. Light bulbs look like church candles which accent what looks like 100s of picture of religious artwork. It definitely has church feel to it.

I’'ve been there, but I don’t remember much. But you can watch. There’s a bunch of videos out on youtube if anyone’s serious.

The restaurant is a VERY popular. I’m talking PACKED popular. There’s like 15 restaurants here in California. It’s a theme restaurant.

Again, I’m not trying to sell this idea. But I am trying to sell that it’s a viable idea, one that should be tested.
  • Rick Duris
PS: I also had another idea related. What if you had Father Guido’s Restaurante and got Father Guido to lend his name to the establishment? That could be a great tie in as well.
 
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You missed my point Rick,
I don’t think that a pope room or a vatican room would be inappropriate what is inappropriate is to attempt to recreate the face of Jesus on a pie as if it were one of those miracles and market it.

It’s too completely different things one is decorating linking the theme of a room to an actual place in Italy (the Vatican) another is to capitalize on an event that many people take seriously and consider it a miracle… Maybe growing up in this country you may not have had the experience of catholicism I have had but from where I come from miracles are not to be made fun of, capitalized on or trivialized.

Now I’m not saying that the person doing this won’t make a fortune, what I’m saying is that neither in the place I’m working at nor the place that I will be open in soon will you see this type of marketing.
 
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Oh, Mike,

I am glad you clarified. Because in one of your previous posts you said:

“As I was taught by my mother back in the restaurant we owned in Italy… “Non si parla mai religione e politica in negozio”. (never speak politics and religion in the shop)”

That WAS the major takeaway I got from that post. So clearly I misunderstood.

Buca diBeppo clearly demonstrates that you can. (No disrespect to you or your Mother.) Not that I can think of any other thematic examples.

Anyway, thank you for your insight.
  • Rick Duris
 
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Registered Guest:
Anyone know why Rick Duris put his name in the title of this thread, instead of just titling it “Jesus Pizza”?
Click to expand...
I told you: “Bragging rights.” 😃 Someone’s going to do this.
  • Rick Duris
 
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Hell, I ain’t gonna do it. You’re just asking for Westboro Baptist Church, and the Phelp’s clan to show up.
 
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