Domino’s Japan CEO, Scott K. Oelkers announces plans to open the first fast-food outlet on the moon. On the site, you can see Mr. Oelkers in a full spacesuit, customized with a Domino’s patch, and displays a big picture of the Moon Branch Project he describes in an intro video on a dedicated site for the project.
Perhaps you think we’re foolish to take on such a challenge and perhaps we are foolish, Mr. Oelkers says. It takes courage to accept a challenge to make your dreams come true.
This outer space initiative will cost around 1.6 trillion Yen (approximately $21 billion). The company outlines the stages of the ambitious program at great length, including an engineer’s full- length presentation of the construction plan, an extensive Q&A session and a menu of the required funding. About $7.3 billion of that investment will be required to transport 70 tons of building materials and pizza oven gear to the Moon via 15 rocket. They have managed to keep the costs down as they plan to make use of local resources where ever possible. Domino’s is going to save about $2.4 billion on concrete by mixing the stuff on site with local lunar materials.
This endeavor can be understood as a counter blow to competitor Pizza Hut which delivered pizza to astronauts in the International Space Station in 2001. This is also one of the ways in which Domino marks its quarter century in Japan. In December, they paid someone about $30,000 to deliver pizza for an hour, and now they announced this, the construction of a dome-shaped Domino’s restaurant on the surface of the moon.
We started thinking about this project last year, although we have not yet determined when the restaurant might open, said Tomohide Matsunaga, a spokesman for Domino’s in Japan.
Bravely or foolish, or both, we shall see. [Moon Domino’s]