The UK’s best-selling thin and crispy frozen pizza brand, Dr. Oetker Ristorante, booked out the First Class carriage on First Great Western’s 15.36 service from London Paddington to Cheltenham Spa on Wednesday April 26 and created a Silver Service pizzeria experience for 32 lucky commuters.

The 32 commuters were given ‘golden tickets’ to upgrade their standard train tickets as they boarded the train at London Paddington. Impeccably-dressed servers greeted the passengers as they transformed an entire First Great Western carriage with white linen tablecloths set with real crockery and glassware, serving a selection of fine wines.

Then, as the train pulled into Didcot Parkway station at 16:16, 16 more waiters boarded the train, each carrying two individual pizzas under silver cloches. In just 60 seconds they boarded, served the 32 passengers and exited before the train doors closed for its onward journey.

The Dr.Oetker team ensured 32 full sized Dr. Oetker Ristorante Mozzarella pizzas were simultaneously prepared just outside Didcot Parkway station in time for the train. Waiters then used a private-access route through the station to ensure the pizzas were plated and served in less than two minutes from being cooked.

Lucy Hurrell-Morgan, Brand Manager at Dr. Oetker Ristorante, says: “Commuting to and from work is something that for most simply needs to be endured rather than enjoyed. It’s understandable that by the time you make it home – you won’t feel like making an evening feel special or exciting. We wanted to surprise commuters and give people some inspiration to make their midweek evenings a little more special with a simple change – by serving our signature thin and crispy pizzas with extra-special pizzeria-style service – in a place and a time you’d never expect. If your commute can be this exciting, there is no end to the possibilities.”

Throughout April and May, the Dr. Oetker Ristorante brand is giving consumers the chance to win up to £10 off their next shop when you buy a promoitonal Ristorante pack and enter the unique code from it online at pizzaristorante.co.uk/midweek. In addition, all entrants will automatically receive a £1 off coupon towards their next pizza.

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The UK’s No. 1 frozen pizza brand, Chicago Town, has just given residents of the UK’s most remote community, the Scottish village of Inverie on the Knoydart Peninsula, “the ultimate takeaway taste” in a stunt which saw a crate containing a fully-stocked freezer cabinet packed full of Chicago Town’s ‘The Takeaway’ pizza flown in by helicopter and landed in a local field.

Chicago Town admits that the epic ‘takeaway’ delivery might seem a over-the-top but Inverie is so remote it is only accessible by helicopter or ferry, so helicopter was the only real way to ensure the villagers got their first taste of ‘takeaway’ pizza.

Inverie in Western Scotland is described by experts as “Britain’s Last Wilderness”. It has just 120 residents and is officially home to the UK’s most remote public house, The Old Forge. The whole community is so small that it shares a single postcode, PH41 4PL. The UK road network doesn’t extend to the peninsula. It is only reachable by a 17-mile hike over very rough terrain or by a regular ferry from Mallaig, seven miles away, giving the place a Guinness National Record for remoteness.

The community has just two shops and a post office to keep the Old Forge pub company. The nearest police station and doctor’s surgery are in Mallaig and the nearest hospital is in Fort William, 26 miles away. The Mallaig lifeboat acts as the community’s emergency response unit. The community is completely separated from the National Grid and acquires all its electricity from renewable energies – the primary source of power for the village is a unique hydro-electric system.

To reach the nearest takeaway would take a minimum of two hours, travelling by boat and car.

So Chicago Town decided to step in and prove there is a need for a high street takeout in the village because Chicago Town’s Takeaway “delivers the ultimate takeaway taste, straight from the freezer.”

The brand chartered a special helicopter to fly in the crate of its best-selling The Takeaway pizza range from a base in Inverness. The helicopter hovered above a field outside the village before lowering down the crate full of pizza. A Chicago Town brand ambassador squad then exited the helicopter to make sure the pizzas were in perfect condition before handing them out to the residents.

Inverie resident Ian Robertson, aged 70, said: “We’ve heard all about takeaway food being delivered elsewhere in the UK. We’ve never actually been able to enjoy one ourselves because we’re so remote no-one would ever deliver here. So to see Chicago Town make such a fuss of us today – and to get our first takeaway delivery by special helicopter – makes the wait well worthwhile. It’s definitely not something we’ll forget in a hurry. And the pizza was lovely.”

A Chicago Town spokesperson said: “We were determined that after years of doing without, we’d go the extra mile to make sure this community was able to enjoy a real takeaway experience with our ‘The Takeaway’ pizza. They all agreed the taste was so good straight out of the freezer that there was actually no need for a takeout in the village after all. It was a bold operation that took months of planning but everyone involved was determined to make it happen.”

Chicago Town has committed to ensuring that Inverie gets regular deliveries of Chicago Town The Takeaway from now on.

The Knoydart peninsula is owned by the Knoydart Foundation, set up in 1997 to buy the old Knoydart Estate and subsequently manage the land on behalf of the community and its thousands of visitors. The community controls 17,500 acres, residential properties, a hydro-electric scheme and many old buildings. All these assets were in very poor condition and it has taken many years of hard work to bring them back into working condition.

The Chicago Town brand is owned by German food group, Dr. Oetker.

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Home baking brand Dr. Oetker has teamed up with 2012 Great British Bake Off winner, John Whaite, to support its “Dare to Bake” campaign, and is offering home bakers the chance to win a trip to Belgium, home of artisan chocolate, by submitting pictures of their own chocolate cakes.

Dr Oetker is a major player in the UK baking ingredients market, having bought the SuperCook brand in 2007. The new campaign will drive Home Baking sales over the key Easter period by encouraging home bakers to share their chocolate creations on the brand’s ‘WeBake.com’ community site.

WeBake.com is a social media platform for bakers which Dr. Oetker launched in November 2016 (see story on promomarketing.info). Dr. Oetker says the site currently has 11,000 users.

John Whaite  won the third series of The Great British Bake Off in 2012, and has since become a chef, TV presenter and cookbook author. He works as a chef, television presenter, and author. He is currently a presenter and judge on ITV’s daytime cookery competition show, The Chopping Block.

First stage entry to the competition is by submitting an image of an original chocolate cake creation to the WeBake.co.uk site. Six people will be selected to then participate in a ‘cake-off’ to be held at John Whaite’s Kitchen Cookery School in Wrightington, Lancashire on Sunday May 28th 2017. The winner will get a return trip for two on Eurostar to Bruges in Belgium, including three nights’ accommodation and a chocolate museum and workshop visit.

No purchase is necessary to enter, but people must register as members of the WeBake.co.uk community. Entries are being accepted until April 18th.

The campaign is being supported by print advertising and video content, as well as PR, social media and digital. Visitors at the Birmingham Cake International show on March 17th to 19th can also experience a free live chocolate technique demonstration and learn more about the campaign.

Jan McKee, Executive Head of Marketing at Dr. Oetker UK, says: “Beat The Baker gives consumers a reason to bake; we aim to inspire home bakers to take up the challenge of beating our famous baker. This is the next level of our “Dare To Bake” campaign and an exciting piece of activity which will drive incremental sales in the run up to Easter.”

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Baking category leader, Dr. Oetker, has launched We Bake, which it claims is the first baking-only social media platform for UK consumers.

We Bake, which launched at the start of November, will reward bakers for baking and unite people everywhere to celebrate a shared love of baking. It will form a fundamental part of the Dr. Oetker Dare to Bake marketing campaign, which is being supported by an ‘always on’ digital, social and PR support and a £3m above-the-line advertising spend.

Consumers who register with We Bake will be able to create profiles and share recipes, tips and advice with fellow bakers. Dr. Oetker says the new community “is here to motivate, help, inspire and reward through seasonal content, helpful advice, baking challenges, and exclusive competitions and events.”

Jan McKee, Executive Head of Marketing UK at Dr. Oetker, says; “Dr. Oetker believes it’s time that bakers had a community to offer encouragement, support and even the opportunity to share and get recognition for a job well done. As category leaders, it’s our responsibility to drive innovation and excitement through our campaigns. We Bake will give people a reason to bake and help to create more occasions for them to do so, ultimately growing both frequency and penetration.”

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Dr. Oetker Ristorante, the UK’s leading thin and crispy frozen pizza brand, is launching a £3m integrated support campaign including its biggest ever sampling drive.

The marketing campaign includes TV, digital (including a 2,000 pizza giveaway on Facebook) and sampling at six UK train stations.

The campaign aims to drive reappraisal of frozen pizza and educate consumers about the positive freshness messages associated with frozen food. Dr. Oetker Ristorante will remain at the forefront of the category’s drive to promote frozen by amplifying the brand’s fresh pizzeria taste messaging.

The nationwide sampling activity takes place between February and March with 70,000 free Dr. Oetker Ristorante pizzas being given away to commuters at London Paddington, London Waterloo, London Victoria, Leeds, Birmingham Grand Central and Manchester Piccadilly.

Dr. Oetker says insight suggests that many people who leave work at the end of the day have still not planned their evening meal at that time, allowing the brand the opportunity to interrupt a normal commute and offer a convenient solution to their evening meal.

The activity aims to position Dr. Oetker Ristorante as a perfect choice for an after-work meal occasion.

The promotion will support the brand’s key message for 2016 that nine out of 10 consumers agree that Ristorante has the best at-home pizzeria taste – a consumer opinion that was uncovered during the brand’s recent Fresh Pizzeria Taste Challenge campaign.

Jan McKee, Head of Marketing at Dr. Oetker UK, says: “Dr. Oetker Ristorante is in a position to add to the wider category’s promotion of the ‘freshness of frozen’ through amplifying the brand’s fresh pizzeria taste messaging. By promoting this message and demonstrating the benefits of frozen food in a compelling way, we can showcase the unbeatable quality of our product and give consumers more reason than ever to choose Dr. Oetker Ristorante.”

McKee adds: “The major sampling activity will encourage trial of the Dr. Oetker Ristorante range by placing our product in the hands of consumers. With confidence in the quality of our pizza and the freshness message, we expect the campaign to boost frequency and penetration in the category.”

Agencies which worked on the campaign include integrated agency LIFE, shopper marketing agency Decide and PR firm Brazen.

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