How I Broke This, ep. 10: Pizza Drone

COLD OPEN (actual recording of a Nov. 24, 2024 local radio WHCR live news dispatch): Ladies and gentlemen, this is Stu Clampitt again in downtown Fishers, Indiana. Well, I … I hardly know where to begin … the chaos … the gunshots … sirens … screams … panic … murder! … murder!! … murder!!! …  before me, a fallen unidentified object on Lantern Road right in front of The Well Coffee House which claims it can turn coffee into water … the object itself doesn’t look very much like a drone …  at least not like drones I’ve seen …  flat really … not flying saucer shape … pizza pan shape is more accurate … 14-inch circumference … bullet riddled … smoke wafting from cracks … a reptilian hiss … an ooze oozing from the cracks …  a bubbling substance, a boiling goo spreading across Lantern Road …  a white, cheesy gunk … a dairy-like lava … mozzarella, I believe … yes, molten mozzarella … screaming pedestrians fleeing the cheesy flow specked with pepperoni and mushroom … blood-like tomato sauce spatter everywhere … I haven’t witnessed downtown pandemonium so intense since IKEA’s grand opening …

GUY RAZZ: I’m Guy Razz, host of How I Broke This. Welcome to my narrative journey about business ineptitude and the failed leaders who failed to learn from their failures. Listen as my guests reveal what led to their crushed entrepreneurial spirits. Today’s guest is Buzz Bezos, floundering founder of Pizza Drone, a pizza delivery service prematurely hailed as The World’s Original Pizzeria of the Skies, home of the Mile High Pizza Pie.

BUZZ: Thanks, Guy. Huge fan.

GUY: I must admit I’m surprised to find Buzz Bezos on my podcast. The Pizza Drone concept seemed unsinkable. I mean, no one fails at pizza. Hamilton County loves its pizza. Opening a pizza shop is like shooting fish in a barrel.

BUZZ: Like I’ve always said, Guy, there are two markets one can depend on for the long run … pizza parlors and funeral parlors. Everyone loves pizza; everyone dies. There’s no two truer truths.

GUY: Why did you choose pizza over burial plots?

BUZZ: Drones fascinate me. Drones are our future, if not the onset of our apocalypse. I want to be part of that. Somehow, I don’t think replacing hearses with drones would go over well with the general public. Pizza Drone was to be the world’s first pizza delivery involving drone technology, allowing us to provide a guaranteed five-minute delivery – or your pie from the sky is free.

GUY: Now that’s fast food.

BUZZ: The whole 30-minute-or-less delivery is so yester-century, Guy. Papa Johns, Pizza Hut, Domino’s might as well deliver by stagecoach. With our Pizza Drone app, you could release one of our pizza-shaped drones at either a 12-, 14-, or 16-inch circumference, pending your appetite. Each drone had brick oven technology to cook your pizza inflight.

GUY: Junk food meets the Jetsons! A pizza delivery revolution! What could go wrong?

BUZZ: Unfortunately, a lot, Guy. The radio news broadcast you shared up front summed up the whole mess. Global media headlined our marketing debacle PIZZAGEDDON!!! Had we taken note of the mass hysteria that was being reported regarding the recent alleged drone invasion in New Jersey, we probably would’ve stalled Pizza Drone’s surprise launch until after the holidays. You know, allow time for the whole War of the Worlds and government conspiracy theories to fizzle out. But, instead, we stuck to our unannounced roll-out plan designed to catch our competition off guard. We launched our business by launching 50 pizza delivery drones over Fishers simultaneously. Talk about free brand awareness! We loaded each drone with our trademark Pepper-Droni and Mush-Zoom pizza. We also reserved a few drones for our Around-The-World specialty pizza, which would literally circumnavigate the globe before being delivered – for that one though, we had to offer a 15-minute-or-less delivery guarantee. Still beats Dominos though.

GUY: So, Pizza Drone’s immediate demise was due to nothing but bad timing?

BUZZ: Well, that and skipping an initial test launch. But how can you test launch 50 drones simultaneously over the town without ruining the surprise? Apparently, R&D miscalculated the weight of the oven bricks. Some drones crashed before the pizza parachutes could be released. But even those pizzas that had successfully dropped via parachutes apparently freaked out the public. People, caught up in the New Jersey scare, thought they were witnessing paratrooping Martians. The sky over Fishers took on the frenzy of a kicked hornet’s nest. Parachuting pizzas. Crashing drones. A fever of fear filled Fishers! We first knew we were in trouble when someone posted on our Facebook page, “What the WKRP is happening!????”

GUY: So, what’s next for Buzz Bezos?

BUZZ: Earlier, your reference to “shooting fish in a barrel” made a light bulb go off in my head: a seafood-firearms fusion restaurant theme. It just might work in Hamilton County.

GUY: Glad to help, Buzz. Sounds like we will be talking again.

Pizza Drone contact: scottsaalman@gmail.com