Pizza Glut

Day One of ‘The Daily Post’, and what better way to start than with a rant?

The Pizza Hut Book-It scheme. When your child is at preschool, in kindergarten, or in first grade, your teacher informs you that he is taking part in the Book-It scheme. It’s a wonderful idea, to encourage reading. You set goals for the number of minutes your child spends reading per week, and if your child achieves those goals, at the end of the month, your child is rewarded with a voucher for a free pizza at Pizza Hut.

I feel my blood pressure rising even as I type. I am so annoyed by this scheme. It’s just blatant marketing to young children, without any opportunity for parental control. Those marketing people at Pizza Hut are by-passing and manipulating me.

The voucher is for one plain child-sized pizza. But you’re not going to take your one child to Pizza Hut, and buy them one plain child-sized pizza. Oh no. You’re going to take your whole family. So for every voucher Pizza Hut gives out (and remember, we’re talking monthly, to every child between the ages of 4 and 7), they probably get a significant number of entire families buying a meal in their restaurants. Even if you did leave the family behind, and take your child on her own to Pizza Hut, you would still end up spending money. You could try insisting on one small plain pizza and a glass of water and getting your child to see this as a big reward, but Pizza Hut know as well as you do, you’re probably going to end up spending on extra toppings, a drink, a dessert, a coffee for yourself.

I know that American families eat out much more often than we do, and Pizza Hut is an obvious kid-friendly choice. My guess is that eating regularly at Pizza Hut is just part of life for a lot of families round here. I’m trying to be culturally sensitive here - perhaps Pizza Hut are just generously helping along families to do what comes naturally to them - nope, I'm afraid it’s not doing much to lower my blood pressure.

Here’s another annoying thing. Because there’s always a 'meal deal', you usually end up not even using that voucher, because the helpful waiter points out that it works out more expensive. So you get to take it home for another time. That irritates me more than I can tell you.

What does this piece of marketing cost Pizza Hut? Almost nothing, I imagine. It's just the cost of printing the vouchers, because here’s the really clever thing – it’s the teachers who do all the administration. Nice one, Pizza Hut. You get the teachers to do the work of keeping track of all those weekly reading minutes. What’s more, if there’s any negative publicity to be had, if a child hasn’t achieved their goal, then it’s the teacher who is the bad guy, not you. Very clever. I just hope the schools have been clever enough on their part to negotiate the most enormous big fat donation up front, with extra pepperoni.

There are ways to deal with the vouchers: my best one is to praise the child for the reading achievement, and to put the voucher away “for a special occasion” (for which read “till you’ve forgotten about it”) – which sometimes works but sometimes doesn’t. I am also aware that there are families for whom a free pizza is a welcome gift, the ones with children on free school meals, the ones whose children take home a 'food for kids' bag on a Friday afternoon. For all that, I still think schools shouldn’t be in the business of promoting Pizza Hut. So, my friends, next time you’re choosing between Pizza Hut and another purveyor of edible food-like items, think of me, and choose the other one. It won’t dent their profits all that much, but you can email me and make me feel better.

Since I’m on the subject, I’d like to extend my rant in the direction of dentists. Why do you give my children a voucher saying “you’ve been brave!” and entitling them to a free kids’ meal at Applebee’s? For a start, I have never implied to them that the dentist is anything other than fun and friendly. I don’t want them (yet) to associate the dentist with the need to be brave. I’m amazed that you do. And I’m amazed that you think encouraging them to go to Applebee’s is in the interests of their dental health. But besides all that, I have this to say to you. A free kids’ meal at Applebee’s? Do you think I’m stupid? Kids eat free at Applebee’s on a Tuesday anyway. You’re having a laugh.