Domino’s Pizza has created a program called ‘Paving for Pizza’ that gives cities in the U.S. grant.money to fix potholes in the roads; in January 2019 Bellevue received a $5,000 grant to fix the city’s streets.

“Domino’s developed the program because there’s nothing worse than hitting a pothole – you instantly cringe. And, it can ruin a perfectly good carryout pizza. We wanted to help smooth the ride home for our pizzas,” Domino’s spokeswoman Danielle Bulgar said.

In June 2018 Domino’s launched the “Paving for Pizza” program, they asked customers to send in communities they felt deserved the grant. Initially, when they asked for the zip codes, Domino’s planned on handing out 20 grants to cities all across the US. That quickly changed when Domino’s saw the amount of people submitting different areas.

“They delivered, submitting more than 190,000 unique nominations from 17,158 different zip codes in all 50 states,” Bulgar said. “However, customers submitted so many notations that Domino’s decided to expand the grants to 50.”

Domino’s gives one community a grant for each state. The states that are next are Washington, Oregon, Nebraska, Missouri, Illinois, Ohio, Louisiana, Maine, New Jersey, and Connecticut. There are grants still open for other states to take action to take to fix potholes on their streets.

“I feel lucky as to receive this grant from Domino’s, it wont go to waste. I’m grateful that we are able to make the roads easier for the people of Bellevue to commute and reduce the damage to any cars that can be caused by potholes,” Bellevue public city work director Jeff Roberts said.

In the states that have not had a city nominated yet, people can go online to the “Paving for Pizza” website and enter a zip code to nominate a city. The nominator has to select a Domino’s location near them to complete the nomination. Then from there, they get in touch with the representative from that specific location and communicate with the city to see if they are interested in receiving the grant.

“Because of construction, I have to find different routes every now and then and it can make my commute longer than 40 minutes,” junior Anthony Holler said.

Bellevue was the city in Nebraska to receive the grant. The money that was given to the city is able to buy 50 tons of asphalt, which equates to around 5 dump truck loads. Construction will begin in the Spring 2018, however the roads that are to fixed first are currently undecided.

“We knew that people were passionate about pizza, but we discovered that Americans are also very passionate about potholes,” Bulgar said.