Brands will go to the ends of the Earth to get your attention.
Perhaps none more literally so than Pizza Hut, which has sent its intrepid pies to places as far-flung as the White House, the International Space Station and, now, the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, the tallest peak in Africa.
The act may make this the weirdest month in pizza history but Pizza Hut apparently came up with the concept to celebrate opening a location in Tanzania, its 100th country, the company managed to deliver a pizza to the top of 19,341-foot Mount Kilimanjaro. But forget your 30-minute guarantee, even if they still offered one. The trek began on May 5 and reached the top on May 8.
The delivery set a new Guinness World Record for the highest altitude pizza delivery on land. You need to specify the “on land” thing because Pizza Hut already delivered to space back in 2001.
The pizzas were escorted by a team of Pizza Hut employees, General Manager of Pizza Hut Africa, Randall Blackford and several professional guides who hiked for six days to reach the peak of one of the world’s tallest mountains. The delivery people took turns transporting the pizza — kept warm by battery-powered heater — across the days-long trek with a an elevation climb of more than 19,000 feet.
“Nothing tastes so good as a pizza after hiking six hours in the middle of the night,” a narrator says in the video recap of the journey.
At the summit, Blackford enjoyed a large slice of pepperoni with his employees.
Sure, it may be one of the world’s most elaborate marketing stunts but it was also for a good cause. The hike raised money for the Msasani Primary School in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. The money will provide needed upgrades to the school for the 1,300 students and provide training for local teachers.
For their effort, they collected the Guinness world record for the highest-altitude pizza delivery on land. We have no idea who previously held that distinction, but it is no doubt a hotly contested honor.
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