What Does Domino's Do With Its Unsold Pizza?

We can think of few pizza chains that rival Domino's, our favorite budget place to order pizza. Launched in 1960, it became a household name thanks to its iconic, and sadly discontinued, 30 minutes or less delivery promise. Today, it ranks as the largest pizza delivery company in the world, and with over 7,000 locations (and counting) in the U.S. alone — so it's only reasonable to wonder what the chain does with its unsold pizza. Judging by what its employees have to say, policy seems to vary dramatically from store to store.

Taking to Reddit, one self-identified Domino's employee asked other staff members what their store policy is for dealing with unsold pizzas. "They go on the hot rack for snacking," one self-IDed employee shared. "Or if a homeless person comes by later in the night to see if we have any mistake pizzas, we'll give them away." Plenty of other comments backed this up, and it appears that throwing away pizzas is the last thing on employees' minds. And honestly, who can blame them? If you have the choice between eating or tossing a perfectly good — and, more importantly, free — pizza, which would you pick? It also helps that they can easily be reheated in the microwave. 

One thing that does seem certain, however, is that saving the leftovers for later is by no means a universal policy. Sometimes, unsold pizzas do indeed end up in the trash. The original poster of the Reddit thread had this to say: "In my store, whenever the head manager is in, all pizzas need to go in the trash, no matter what." Others mentioned similar manager-dependent rules, so whatever happens to unsold pizza seems to come down to the whims of whoever's running the shift.

Though it's encouraging to see that many Domino's locations often save unsold pizzas for staff, and sometimes the homeless or women's shelters, not everything gets the same treatment. In a now-deleted Reddit post, one employee shared how they'd thrown a huge number of dough trays straight into the dumpster. For those unfamiliar, a tray refers to the containers used to hold, proof, and transport pizza dough balls before baking. Each tray contains exactly eight balls. Usually, it's the store manager's responsibility to order the right amount, and the comments weren't exactly pleased. "How can you have a [general manager] that doesn't even know how to order food properly? Absolutely not," one Redditor wrote. "When I ran a store[,] we'd waste that many trays in a year."

While staff can put aside and eat an unsold pizza, expired dough belongs in the bin and should never be served to customers. What unsold pizzas and dough have in common, however, is that there's no company-wide policy dictating what happens to either should they not sell. Once again, where it ends up is decided by the manager. In some positive cases, surplus non-expired dough is donated. "If my store has that much extra dough, and we don't expect to use it before it expires, we'll usually make like [five to six] pies and send [them] off to local Police Departments, EMT Centers[,] and Fire Departments," one employee shared. Other times, it just ends up in the garbage, and there's no shortage of evidence for that, either. In the right environment, expired dough can still ferment, expanding into a blob that, if left unchecked, will spill out of the dumpster and into the surrounding area. This phenomenon has landed several Domino's stores in hot water, er, dough.