After an April Fools’ joke of helicopter pizza delivery left pizza-craving islanders thinking wishfully, a Dominos in the St. Maarten airport has officially teamed up with the airline Winair to offer small, neighboring islands pizza delivered by plane.
Audrey Agard, a manager at the Dominos location, told Mashable that since the service launched earlier this month, it has become quite popular — with several requests per day.
The food service is taking advantage of existing flights already scheduled to the islands. So when a customer calls to order a pizza, they are able to pick an arrival time and the pizza is baked right before departure. Typical fight times range from 15 to 20 minutes, depending on the island and weather conditions.
So what will this cost? As of right now, Agard said the delivery fee will only set customers back $2.75. The only downside that we can see is how jealous plane passengers will be when the delicious pizza smell takes over the plane’s cabin.
Unfortunately, for pizza enthusiasts, they’ll still have to drive to the airport in order to pickup their pizza from Winair, but that’s better than no pizza at all.
Be sure to tip your pilot. You’re also on your own for obligatory “case of the munchies” jokes, this being Caribbean pizza delivery and all.
Open thread.
beltane
The US flag was just raised over the American embassy in Havana.
Benw
Wow, only in America! What a great country.
ThresherK
St. Maarten isn’t the first place I think of when I think “pizza”, but…Domino’s?
I’ve gotta go to Frank Pepe’s to get the idea of that taste out of my mouth.
Paul in KY
@ThresherK: Shows you how much demand there is for pizza down there that they would fly in Dominoes. No telling how much a real pizza would go for.
scav
@Benw:
That comment works on so very many levels.
redshirt
@beltane: Is there a Domino’s in Havana yet?
When do the casinos open?
NotMax
Ye olde geezer’s turn to cook for (up to, dependent on who shows) 16 for the Sat. night gathering.
Settled on a menu of chicken marsala over wild rice, bourbon glazed carrots and butternut squash/mascarpone gnocchi.
As there is one person who shuns mushrooms and another onions (even though will be using only shallots), also making roasted taters.
Have to make the gnocchi mix Friday and let it refrigerate overnight. Otherwise, it will be a cooking cyclone come Saturday.
ThresherK
@Paul in KY: In my “history of TV” reading I seem to remember ABC beating the richer, more popular NBC and CBS to the punch airing the first film of QE2’s coronation in the USA in 1952. If memory serves, the footage (film, of course) was developed in a darkroom on a special plane by technicians while they were winging back over the North Atlantic. (I probably copped this from Erik Barnouw.)
So, if they could do that sixty years ago, how difficult can it be to put a good pizza oven in a plane?
gian
Seems like a perfect place for Amazon drone delivery. If they can get the battery life to work
bemused
Pizza by air, yippee! Dominos, um, pass on that, my pizza craving just disappeared.
Bobby Thomson
@ThresherK: mmmmm. Pepe’s clam pie.
Fr33d0m
St. Maarten is not easy to fly into–its easier to fly into the sea there than to land properly. Its interesting that the risk is worth it.
NotMax
About the best one can say about Domino’s pizza is that it beats out Little Caesar’s.
Amir Khalid
@bemused:
Artisanal pizza is no doubt wonderful and puts multinational corporate behemoth pizza to shame, but people will never know that for themselves until the pizza makers take the initiative and put together the resources to deliver pizzas to wherever there are hungry people. Which is a real shame.
mainmata
Domino’s pizza is to real pizza as Salisbury steak is to fillet mignon. Bleagh!
NotMax
@Fe33d0m
Treacherous? Fewer than a dozen pilots total worldwide officially qualified to land at the airport in Bhutan.
Paul in KY
@ThresherK: Sure they could do it. Don’t know if I would want to fly in a plane that has an operational pizza oven. Wonder what FAA would say about that?
NotMax
@Paul in KY
Wood-fired would be, shall we say, problematic.
redshirt
@beltane: Is there a Domino’s in Havana yet?
Calouste
@Benw: St. Maarten is its own country.
boatboy_srq
@NotMax: Anything but electric would be problematic. Add to that the difficulty in maintaining cabin pressure/temp/humidity, and determining when to bake (best at level flight, and removing and slicing during descent could be as dangerous as wood-fired at any altitude). And don’t pizza-cutters make the TSA prohibited list?
NotMax
Insomnia has its uses: got around to hanging a newly purchased and put together 22w ×: 25h × 8d cabinet in the kitchen, solely for spices, at 3 in the morning
NotMax
Bad coding fix.
Insomnia has its uses: got around to hanging a newly purchased and put together 22w × 25h × 8d cabinet in the kitchen, solely for spices, at 3 in the morning
beltane
My husband’s family in Curacao, another one of the Netherlands’ Caribbean territories, love to eat at Denny’s, a place we would only eat at in the most desperate of circumstances. Dominos is in that same category of food I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy, but some people really love it.
PurpleGirl
@Benw: “What a [great] country” must be said in a voice copying Yakov Smirnoff.
Patricia Kayden
@beltane: Good. About bleeding time.
Calouste
The WaPo has an article up about Trump’s ground game in Iowa, and it looks like the man is very serious:
I think Trump makes only occasional retail appearances because he judges that doing many of them would diminish his celebrity appeal.
Thoughtful Today
NOOooo!
“Domino’s pizza is that it beats out Little Caesar’s.”
Such perfidy can not stand!
Little Caesar’s beats Dominos.
:)
the Conster
The smell of food on planes and trains makes me crazy. Anytime someone grabs McDonalds then gets on with me, makes me distracted and hungry even if I just ate, because there’s no better smell in the world than McDonald’s fries. Pizza and chinese food too. It gets stuck in your head until you have to have it.
@beltane:
I have vacationed in Curacao – the food was terrible. The Dutch aren’t exactly known for their cuisine. If I had to eat one more gouda bowl filled with ground meat I was going to scream and would have gone to Denny’s if I knew where it was.
ThresherK
@Paul in KY: If we’re gonna play fantasy, then my fantasy is that it’s not a passenger plane. Think of an airborne version of a good version of a food truck.
gian
@Calouste:
Trump tickles the 80s Reagan nostalgia in a way none of the other GOP candidates do.
Paul in KY
@beltane: I bet their Dennys are better than our Dennys.
Amir Khalid
@Calouste:
If the Donald is in it to win it in enough states, he could last much longer into the primaries than his “serious” competition was counting on. This is (cue theme from Jaws) OMINOUS.
KG
@Calouste: depends on which side of the island you’re on. The north side is technically part of France. The south is a constituent country within the kingdom of the Netherlands.
Beautiful island though…
Paul in KY
@ThresherK: I didn’t think I was playing fantasy. Putting a pizza oven in a plane is something I can see someone trying.
KG
@Thoughtful Today: if you’re choosing between dominos and littler Caesars you probably should reevaluate the life choices that brought you to such a place
Paul in KY
@KG: A friend of mine who visited St. Maartens said: ‘Everything that is good for you is very expensive & everything that is bad for you is dirt cheap’.
Haven’t visited there, so I have no idea how true that is. He visited back in late 90s.
Amir Khalid
@boatboy_srq:
If I understand the story right, Domino’s bakes its “pizzas” on the ground and then has them delivered by plane.
Cacti
Bought my tickets for opening night of Straight Outta Compton last night.
I’m such a dork.
But I’m unapologetically looking forward to it.
Can’t believe Eazy E’s been dead for 20 years now, and that I’m older now than he was when he passed.
kindness
Delicious???? I thought the article said it was Dominos Pizza.
Another Holocene Human
Family Faith Freedom Tour in Houston today. Advocating dissolving the 9th circuit, saying gays want to make your children their slaves so we should kill them all, the usual.
KG
@Amir Khalid: he’s leading in all four of the early states and in some cases by large margins. If he manages to win two and place or show in the other two, he’ll be in a very strong position for Super Tuesday. It’ll be interesting to see what happens during the four early contests as far as thinning the field and what that will do for Trump. It’ll also be fun to see what happens if he picks up even the slight air of inevitability
Cacti
@Another Holocene Human:
So, all the stuff that Jesus would be saying himself if he were around today, right? lol
KG
@Paul in KY: I’ve been once, as a teenager in the mid90s. One stop on a family vacation cruise. My memories are vague, but what I remember of all the islands was good.
scav
OK, now I’m wondering about the complexities involved in baking pizza on a plane that is filled with otters.
Gin & Tonic
@Paul in KY: Think of all the heat you are otherwise throwing away into the atmosphere.
Felanius Kootea
The pizza delivery video was pretty cool – a cliff landing on one of the shortest commercial runways in the world. But all that for Dominos Pizza? Sounds like they need to get more pizza places in the Caribbean.
shell
So..why doesn’t somebody open up a pizza stand on these islands, if theres a demand?
Doug R
@boatboy_srq: maybe a heat bleed off the engine but I think the flight’s too short
gene108
@Calouste:
From what I’ve gathered from the internet, Trump, on paper at least, seems to have a large team in place in New Hampshire, Iowa, South Carolina and Nevada.
Whether or not these folks will actually do the work needed or are just grifters, I do not know.
But if Trumps people are serious, he’s not going away.
The reason Romney outlasted the not-Romneys, is because Romney was the only candidate with functioning operations, donor networks, etc. in place in each state.
Trump maybe able to skip the donor networks part, so if his team is serious, he’s in it for the long haul.
Edit: If the rumors about Trump being a Clinton ratfucking operation are true, what I’d love is for him, at the GOP convention, to say “the only reason I ran, is because my good friends the Clintons asked me to. Therefore, I must now decline the nomination.” AND BOOM! Watch the fun begin.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@scav:
Did someone say “otter cam”?
montereybayaquarium.org/animals-and-experiences/live-web-cams/sea-otter-cam
And if you didn’t, you should have. ;-)
Jeffro
Back to Erick Erickson asking “Can We Recalibrate?” redstate.com/2015/08/14/can-we-recalibrate/
1) Wonkette’s hilarious in taking EE down for this one…
2) The comments section at RedState itself is even better – every other commenter thinks the hate mail EE has received is actually Soros-funded, Alinskyite dirty tricks from the DemoRATs. Oh my. They’re gonna eat each other alive this election cycle…
Jeffro
@Jeffro: Like so:
Doug R
@scav: The plane is probably an Otter
Jeffro
@Jeffro: Here’s another, offered with a heavy dose of irony:
Paul in KY
@scav: Mmmmm…otter pizza. Make mine with banana peppers please & onions.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@beltane:
They’re serving Cuban pork in the commissary today. Coincidence?
(Well, yes, probably, but a tasty, tasty coincidence that will be my lunch.)
Paul in KY
@Gin & Tonic: Like the heat that emanates from jet engines & the like?
Cacti
@Jeffro:
At another lefty political blog, I saw Bernie supporters (at least they held themselves out as such), suggesting that BLM was a Soros-funded front to help Hillary.
But I’m thinking they were a mole. A true Bernie fringer would have accused them of being a Koch brothers front.
gene108
@shell:
Maybe ingredients are hard to come by?
Maybe wheat and tomatoes are hard to grow and they do not have good grazing land for a large enough dairy industry…and importing those ingredients would be cost prohibitive…
Amir Khalid
@shell:
Think of the expense of importing pizza ingredients to these islands — the right kind of flour for the crust, the mozzarella and other cheeses, sausage, etc.
Benw
@Calouste: that’s the joke!
@PurpleGirl: in my head it sounds like the doofy “African” accent Eddie Murphy used in “Coming to America”, but Yakov works too!
Jeffro
@Cacti:
Exactly! Come on GOP moles – why would Soros fund intra-Dem warfare? Your attempts at rodent-copulation should at least make sense! lol
beltane
The idea of eating a steaming hot pizza in the tropics doesn’t really appeal to me. Dominos is more like room temperature cardboard so it may not be so bad.
The ingredients for all other kinds of non-indigenous food are imported to Caribbean islands on a routine basis. Why would pizza be any different?
Mike J
@KG:
Especially since you can make better yourself with water, yeast, and flour, plus whatever toppings you like.
Ruckus
@beltane:
I don’t think they really love it, it’s what is available. When on the event site in my last job it was eat out for 4-8 days at a time. A pizza delivered for lunch was eaten by what looked like ravenous dogs. Even if it was Domino’s. And Denny’s for breakfast wasn’t all that bad, all things considered, like how much time one had before the day started, much too early.
Cacti
And since there isn’t a FP post on it…
Big congrats to President Obama and SoS Kerry on the reopening of the US Embassy in Havana.
Amir Khalid
@beltane:
Tropical people like hot food too. Trust me on this.
Jparente
@Thoughtful Today: Sorry. I’m a NYer. Consequently a Pizza Snob. Totono’s in Coney Island is the best in the NY area, hence the world. (excluding genuine Neopolitan, of course). ;-)
beltane
@Amir Khalid: I’m Italian and greasy pizza on a hot, humid day is something I won’t touch. It’s not the heat, it’s the heat combined with dairy, really grosses me out.
beltane
@Jparente: Yep, genuine pizza is not a greasy, larded up slab of awfulness. It is light, tasty, and only moderately filling.
Ruckus
You guys are getting me hungry for pizza. That’s bad, bad I say! Pizza is not on my diet. I won’t give in, no I won’t! I won’t give in…………
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Amir Khalid:
“Pizza” is a sufficiently broad category that they could probably whip something up with mostly local ingredients and only need to import flour and cheese. So I will instead place the blame on the cuisines of the French and Dutch colonists, neither of which have ever produced anything pizza-like.
Paul in KY
@Amir Khalid: Glad to have an expert here :-)
Paul in KY
Leaving for the weekend. Any Juicer in CKY area ought to drop by Woodland Arts fair in Chevy Chase, Lexington. 40th year. Very nice fair & weather supposed to be great.
Hope all have a great weekend!
scav
I’d imagine there’s also a certain cachet to eating the same stuff everyone else (non-islanders) do. Exotic! AsSeenOnTV! And then the cachet and novelty of delivery! Bit of an affordable thrill. Extrapolating a bit from my parents descriptions of the thrill (and quality) of “foreign” food served in restaurants during their youths.
beltane
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): The pizza from the region my family’s from rarely has cheese and only sometimes has tomatoes. Squid, escarole, or whatever else is on hand is the traditional topping.
beltane
My husband says I’m a pizza tyrant so I apologize for any over the top comments.
The memory of the burning cheese smell outside the Original Ray’s in Greenwich Village still nauseates me. Some blame this place for the demise of traditional New York, Neapolitan derived pizza.
Cervantes
@shell:
Statius and Saba, the islands in question, are small — no more than eight square miles each — and one of them is mostly a volcano.
As for Sint Maarten, there is good pizza there, not only the ridiculous fraud perpetrated by Domino’s.
Mike in NC
St. Maarten is a place that caters to cruise ships, and they do a lot of business selling watches and cameras and other consumer goods tax-free. You can also get deals where stuff costs about half what it would cost here in the states. One of the resorts we stayed at had a liquor store where, for example, a bottle of Stoli was $7.
p.a.
Just had my first taste of fermented tofu, Taiwan style. Would describe it as like soft cheese from a dirty sock washed in tobasco sauce. But not in a bad way.
Randy P
@beltane: and eaten with a knife and fork. Which I will admit to doing when in Europe and surrounded by knife-and-forkers, though every fiber of my being cries out to pick it up, fold it the long way and start nibbling.
Gin & Tonic
@Cervantes: one of them is mostly a volcano.
So in other words they can get the oven hot enough for real pizza.
Betty
It is probably the US medical students on Saba ordering the pizza. There is some decent pizza on the French side, but it is far from the airport. Dominos has an operation at the airport.
Ruckus
@scav:
Very little pizza in Alaska either. So there are pizza’s flown to small villages. Prices I’ve heard seem rather expensive for a pie. Also some of the shops have trouble getting and keeping ingredients useable so that adds to the cost because everything has to be flown in. Or out.
Steeplejack
Fired up the TV—off all day! blessed silence—to watch Aston Villa vs. Manchester United on NBC Sports. It’s good to have the Premier League back in session.
Big Picture Pathologist
What a horrible waste of gas.
Cervantes
@Big Picture Pathologist:
These are already-scheduled flights, not meant only for transportation of alleged pizza.
AnderJ
I like pie!
WereBear
Wow.
Of course, you had be at gnocchi…
Geeno
@Another Holocene Human: The children or the gays?
bystander
@NotMax: Giving new meaning to a Stairway to Heaven fireworks display.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Just saw Jeb! getting heckled in Iowa about Iraq
So…. his brother signed an international agreement he didn’t think the United States should adhere to? Also, “could’ve been modified”, we could get a better deal with Iran, we could have Obamacare with all the stuff you like and none of the stuff you (think you) don’t. How? With what Iraqi government? Should we have agreed to letting US personnel be subject to Iraqi law enforcement? IIRC that was the main sticking point between Obama and Malike, who both did, in fact, want to maintain a substantial US presence
(And now MSNBC is going to get to the important stuff, gossip about Gore– who has already shot down the rumors– and Biden, who I think really should)
Tree With Water
“Gov. Scott Walker signed a bill Wednesday to subsidize the arena, which could cost the public twice as much as originally projected. Echoing the owners’ arguments, the governor proclaimed that the arena, a practice facility and a promised “entertainment district” would spur a renaissance for downtown Milwaukee and attract tourists. Income taxes paid by the pro athletes, the governor said, would fill local coffers…
….Nor was the timing of the arena deal auspicious. The governor and legislators approved the arena just one month after they made deep $250 million cuts in the prestigious University of Wisconsin system”.
He’s typical of them all, and Americans will not tolerate that caliber fiscal misbehavior by any political party for much longer. The country needs a democratic candidate that can differentiate between the deluded who vote for the hucksters and the hucksters themselves; one willing to call out republican leadership for the liars and thieves they are, that they can be electorally crushed. I want the GOP extinguished discredited, extinguished as a national power. What the country really needs is a democratic candidate with the political courage to state unequivocally that Bush-Cheney conspired to plot war, so war came.. That would be a most excellent place to begin the conversation.
gene108
@Jeffro:
I read the some of the Red State comments. This one sticks out, because he/she is critical of Republicans for failing to address the problems the alternate reality created by right-wing media has been feeding her/him:
Just a thing of beauty…
I want Washington Republicans to pass legislation, which can plane shift to his alternate reality and make everything better…
It really does seem right-wingers are getting consumed by the beast they created.
redshirt
@gene108: Such breathtaking stupidity, and yet, their vote is as good as yours or mine!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’ve looked at a couple of write-ups on that story, trying to find out if, as I suspect, the actual damage was done by a private company that had been hired by the EPA to clean up the mess left by a private mining company operating in an unregulated business environment, long-term socialization of expense long after the private profit has been harvested.
Keith G
@redshirt:
That’s the way it should be. We just have to step up our game.
The Democratic Party for quite some time seems have given up on the folks of fly-over country and given up on the levels of government and communication that most interacts with them.
I understand. It’s pretty fucking hard and inglorious work (for people as smart and accomplished as progressives), but leaving them (the local yokels) in a void has created room for conservatives to have their way with them. School boards, county commissions and state legislatures can all vibrate at the same frequency and communicate the same messages.
The party of the president is significant, but I think it is doubtful that further important change will continue unless we get better at moving things at the neighborhood and county level. It’s a daunting challenge and I am not overly optimistic that enough liberals/progressives will buy into it.
Another Holocene Human
@Geeno: They already kill willful children, but in Texas, the gays are often armed.
Another Holocene Human
@Keith G:
How? In what way? Appalachia went GOP because the Sheriff is Near. Nobody made them do that.
Southern Dem parties are fucking basketcases. Yeah, I guess blame the DNC … and every other national organization that only spends so much money trying to ‘fix’ the South. The fix has to come from within. Florida had a few good years. GA and NC are making a good run for it. VA just had enough sane people move in to move the needle. SC, AL, MS, who the hell knows. AR has kiddy diddling and Jesus, so they don’t need your “facts” and “logic”. MO, well we’ve seen their Hell’s heart. TX. Ugh.
The West? Try to tell me the Dems are not investing in Western Senate races, I will call you a liar.
The Midwest? You tell me. The Dems didn’t pull out of the Midwest. In fact the Dems and Labor poured a good chunk of change into the Midwest. If they are voting GOP because spite and “those people” and Jeebus it’s not for lack of trying on the Dems’ parts.
Keith G
@Another Holocene Human:
I live in Houston and the good news is that this is the first I have heard of this. Seems to not be making a big splash here ’bouts.
Keith G
@Another Holocene Human: I spent time growing up in Ohio before my move to Texas. As I left Ohio, I noticed how conservatives were were organizing to be a force in local governments up there. I saw it in spades down here as I settled in.
Note that I was excluding federal level politics, so you can save it.
They may not, but their kids do. The only fight you are certain to lose is the one you do not begin.
John M. Burt
And one day, pizza delivery by air will be among the standard citations of the kind of idiocy people of the early 21sr Century were still inventing, even as they understood how much damage burning fossil fuels was causing to their environment, and how little cheaply-accessible oil was left.
The flying pizza delivery will be the “body on the barbed wire” of future history films . . . .
Tom
@NotMax: I’m right there with you. I’ve had trouble sleeping since I was a kid.
I take the awake time as a gift and get some work done. For me, that means writing course materials and grading student assignments.
My wife might have an issue if I decided to put up shelving.
(Although one time I did decide to try out a recipe for quiche which involved a hand blender.)
Cervantes
@Jim, Foolish Literalist, quoting:
It wasn’t immediately the Colorado River, it was a Colorado river: the Animas.
No. It was the EPA’s team, trying to find and plug a long-standing but relatively slow leak of toxic water out of a retired gold mine, instead accidentally breaching a natural retaining dam — at which point millions of gallons of the same toxic water gushed into the Animas.
Private entities are involved in the sense that the retired gold mine and its neighbors are still privately owned, and may be guilty of not addressing the leak before the catastrophic rupture — which is not to say they’ll ever be prosecuted.