While Domino’s Pizza is widely recognized for its tasty menu items, Domino’s in Greenville this week was recognized for something much more — feeding the front line workers of their community.
Spearheaded by supervisor Justin Moxley, the restaurant participated in a challenge among several Domino’s restaurants nationwide to see who could make the most pizzas in an hour.
Those pizzas fed the men and women who are contributing to flattening the COVID-19 curve and providing some continued normalcy for residents.
Moxley’s pizza making team consisted of Jeremy Hawkins, Deandre Howard, Kehmoni Cannon, Quentin Capers, Chris Glass, Mary Pearson and Kylita Sprouse.
“The way this all started is I’m on a lot of Domino’s Facebook stuff and the world’s fastest pizza maker who won the competition in 2018 I believe, put a challenge out there for how many one topping pizzas you can make in an hour,” Moxley said.
According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the most pizzas made in an hour is 206, and Moxley said he wanted to see how many they could prepare compared to that number.
In all, Moxley and his team ended up making a total of 278 pizzas in an hour, tying with another challenge participant.
“So I was trying to see what I could do just to match up and kind of do something for the community with feeding the frontline workers,” he said. “We sent a whole bunch to the hospital, gas stations, banks, Fed Ex drivers and other frontline workers.”
Moxley shared he saw #feedthepeople trending on Facebook and thought, “Hey, I wonder what I could do.”
It turns out he and his team could do a lot, and they did just that.
When asked how long he’d been with the nationally touted pizza company, he joked, “Does all my life count?”
“I grew up in Greenville and my dad actually worked for Domino’s and so I grew up in Domino’s as a kid and when I turned 16, I thought, ‘I’m going to get my first job and why not Domino’s? I already know how to make a pizza,’” Moxley said. “So at 16, I applied, got a job and then I started climbing the ranks from there and I’ve been with the company almost 11 years now.”
As much experience as Moxley has in the pizza industry, he knows firsthand how high the demand is for food, especially now.
He talked about Domino’s role as an essential business in the community.
“Well first of all, we’re super blessed to even be able to work in this pandemic. Food is a big thing and pizza is a favorite thing to people,” he said. “I love the fact that I see people and they can go home to eat a fresh, hot pizza because we’re able to do this in the pandemic. I guess, in a way, pizza saves lives,” he said. “It’s just a very great feeling knowing that we can feed so many people during this time … we’re just super blessed to be allowed to do that.”
Moxley also noted several people expressed their gratitude and appreciation for Domino’s providing the pizzas, which left him feeling “extremely moved.”
Domino’s owner Holly Ravela said, “It was really (Moxley’s) baby. We thought it was a great way to build some morale in the store because the stores are getting beat up.”
Ravela noted how busy the crew members have been as of late, so they wanted to take care of the community by feeding the people who are on the front lines working extremely hard and make it a fun experience at the same time.
“We just thought it was a great opportunity to have fun and give back to the community that’s taking care of us,” she said.
