Dairy industry partners with Domino's to increase cheese sales

Washington Ag March 18, 2009 On average, each American consumes pizza 39 times each year. But, pizza sales have actually declined over the past five years. Now dairy producers, through their dairy checkoff, have launched a new partnership with Domino's, the world's number one pizza delivery chain, to help boost pizza sales, and thereby increase cheese sales. Tom Gallagher, CEO of Dairy Management Inc., which manages the National Dairy Checkoff, says partnerships like this demonstrate how cheese can help excite consumers and increase sales. Gallagher: "The partnership with Domino's is very exciting. They've announced six new pizzas, with several different types of cheeses, all American made cheeses, that we just think is going to be a real success. And I guess, through this process, where we're supporting this effort, that there will be more cheese on these pizzas – we'd like to be able to show that it is about the cheese." Dave Brandon, CEO of Dominos Pizza says there new American Legends Pizzas feature 40 percent more cheese. Brandon: "Domino's is extremely pleased to have DMI, and America's dairy farmers in this endeavor. We all have a shared goal, and that is to sell more pizza and sell more cheese on pizza. The additional cheese sales that will result from these offerings as we estimate it could be more than 10 million pounds of cheese annually." Dairy producers will be investing about 12 million dollars over two years in this project and Domino's will be spending four to five times that amount thereby leveraging the check off's dollars. I'm Bob Hoff and that's Washington Ag Today on the Northwest Ag Information Network.