Hamster and Pineapple pizza, anyone? A Pizza Hut franchise in Victoria has been forced to apologise after offering customers “a free small animal” when ordering ten pizzas. The ill-advised promotion was run in conjunction with a neighboring pet shop before outraged animal rights groups saw the deal hastily withdrawn. As bad ideas go, this one is worse than the Cheeseburger Crust.
[credit provider=”Shutterstock” url=”http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-216425233/stock-photo-golden-hamster-on-golden-background.html”]
The bizarre “free pet” promotion first appeared on a Mount Waverley Pizza Hut’s storefront window on 1 September. As the poster explained, any customer that ordered ten pizzas would receive a voucher which could be exchanged for a small critter of their choice from local pet shop Pets Story.
Needless to say, the offer was not authorised by Pizza Hut Australia, which quickly stepped in to shut the promotion down and issue the following apology:
It has come to our attention that one of our stores have recently been running a promotion which was not approved by Pizza Hut Australia, nor was condoned in any circumstances. We would like to sincerely apologise to anyone who was offended by this.
The poster has since been taken down and all those involved have been made aware of the severity and inappropriateness of the promotion. On behalf of Pizza Hut Australia we once again apologise for this thoughtless promotion ever occurring and would like to reassure you all that this matter is being seriously dealt with.
Pizza Hut later confirmed on its Facebook page that no pets had been given away throughout the promotion. Nevertheless, customers have continued to take the franchise to task over the deal on social media. Animal rights group Oscar’s Law slammed the promotion as completely unacceptable.
While animal rights groups tend to overact in situations like this, we’ve got to side with Oscar’s Law on this one. Most people that order ten pizzas at once are usually in the midst of a drunken party. This is not the kind of environment that any freebie hamster should be exposed to.
In conclusion, giving away live animals with fast food is just bad business sense: don’t do it.
[Via Mumbrella]
Comments
9 responses to “Pizza Hut Apologises For Giving Away ‘Small Animals’ With Its Pizzas”
I can’t believe that at no point when this idea was tabled, no one spoke up and said “Yeah I don’t think this is such a good idea…”. Seriously, wtf are people thinking.
Even worse is the pet store who willingly took part in this. Obviously they couldn’t care less about their animals. Even more reason why pet stores should be limited to selling pet products only, and not actual animals.
The thing to remember here, is that a lot of stores are franchised. This sounds like the store owner had this deal privately arranged with the petshop and Pizza Hut corporate were not involved. I’ve seen similair sorts of things happen at the Forest Lake store, but in reverse, where they refuse to honour Pizza hut advertised deals, because theyre ‘franchised’. Incidentally corporate kicked their asses over that, as they’re bound by contract to honour any corporate mandated deals…
Yeah I get that but it still boggles the mind that anyone would actually think this was a good idea, franchisee or not.
Pet stores that sell animals generally don’t give a crap about them. You’ll notice most pet stores don’t actually sell animals anymore, they sell all the food and gear you need, and refer you to shelters for adoption.
I don’t get it. I mean it’s a dumb promotion for a bunch of reasons and I don’t like the idea of impulse buying pets, but why is it an animal rights issue? You get a voucher for a free pet if you order ten pizzas. It’s not like you get a live rabbit stuffed inside a pizza box.
Because it encourages people who previously may have never thought about getting a pet to get one on impulse just because it’s free, without thinking about the care and responsibility needed.
Yeah, but that’s not really any more irresponsible than selling small pets without a 3 day waiting period. I mean you buy ten pizzas, get a gift certificate, and unless the pet store is the best damn pet shop in town you have to wait until at least the next day for the store to be open because Pizza Hut don’t deliver early enough that you can eat your pizza and make it to the shops by 5 (letalone eat ten pizzas or wrap up whatever event you ordered them for).
If they were giving it away with every pizza or delivering it with the pizza so it was a case of ‘haha, the guy on the phone just said I can have a free duck, yeah I’ll take that’ I’d be probably agree with you, but at ten pizzas it actually seems less impulsive than paying full price for a pet.
I don’t want to sound like I’m just having a go at animal rights groups since even when they do stupid things I tend to agree with their basic ideals, but this really does feel like they’re copping flak because someone read the headline version of ‘Pizza Hut gives away pets with pizzas’ and assumed it meant all Pizza Hut stores and the pet was delivered in a box with every pizza.
I remember when some birthdays would give out bags of goldfish. Yep. Totally fine.
The Cheeseburger Crust is coming back around Nov
Pfft, just typical social media warriors reacting with their hands first and not their heads, I bet a free $5 gift voucher for a pet shop with 10 pizza purchase would’ve snuck under the rader.
The ‘drunken party’ example is also stupid, because no druken party operates between 9am-5pm.
You’re not allowed to sell hamsters in Australia.
if you want to pick and choose the cruelty, the hamster is getting a better deal out of this than the chickens, cows, pigs that might comprise the ten pizzas. It’s fate is at least ambiguous.