Taco Pizza Tradition

Title: “Taco Pizza Tradition”

General Information about Item:

  • Verbal Lore, Domino’s Lore
  • Language: English
  • Country of Origin: United States
  • Informant: Jake Shinohara
  • Date Collected: 11-13-19
  • Location Collected: Oro Valley, AZ

Informant Data:

Jake Shinohara is a college student at the University of Arizona studying Biology. He went to school at Canyon Del Oro High School. He grew up playing soccer with his friends and family. During his junior year in high school, he worked at the Domino’s store in Oro Valley, AZ. He was primarily a pizza line cook, but did deliver pizzas when needed.

Contextual Data:

Like every fast food chain, Domino’s prides itself on its quick and quality service. Anything that can be done in order to speed up the process of making and delivering pizzas is key to each individual chain’s success. With this in mind, it can become monotonous to bake pizza all day long. So, as a way to switch things up and create a little excitement in the store, the manager created this minor tradition in order to keep the workplace happy and bring the workers closer together.

Item:

Once a week, the manager would send a couple employees to a nearby grocery store to purchase Mexican food ingredients in order to make a taco pizza. Every would eat the pizza after it was made.

Interpretation: 

This tradition bonds the workers over a unique pizza. They make hundreds of pizzas every week and putting a twist on this practice is much appreciated. This is a fun way to use Domino’s resources (ovens, dough, and pizza sauce) for a team building exercise. Everyone enjoyed getting to make and eat a taco pizza.

Collectors Information: 

Names: Christian Trejo

University Name: Dartmouth College

Course’s Title: Russian 13

Instructor’s Name: Professor Victoria Somoff

Term and year: Fall 2019