Chevy Pizza Crawl: Round 2
After the success of last month’s Chevy Pizza Crawl, the kind folks at Chevy teamed up again with WorstPizza.com to take another group of people out across the city in 5 brand new 2010 Chevy cars in a 5-hour pizza sampling adventure.
When my friends heard about this, they assumed the typical things similar to a time share: Chevy would give us a spiel on their cars, hand us lots of literature, make us watch a boring video in a conference room, try to bait us into making sales, and after then and only then, we could go on our trip. Nope, it was actually the exact opposite.
About the Crawl
While there were reps from Chevy to answer any questions we had or to get occasional feedback, they were mainly focused on the group just having a great time and using their cars to get from place to place, and of course, to tweet often with the hash tag #ChevyPizzaCrawl.
See, this (thinly-veiled) marketing technique gets the attendants to talk about the event a lot in the public social space, throw in their own opinions about the cars (I really liked the 2010 Chevy Equinox after driving it and tweeted a few reasons why), and just get the name out there often. By extension, everyone they’re connected to on Twitter and Facebook, and anywhere else where their Twitter account syncs to, can see the fun. If they were even luckier, the attendees would blog about it, much like the post you’re reading now.
After a brief kickoff at the Ed Morse Chevrolet dealership in Sunrise, FL, we got our fashionable shirts, “survival kits” that battle the sun, indigestion, headaches or anything else we’d need or like (Tootsie Pops!) during our travels, then were taken to the new cars: The Equinox, Malibu, Camaro, Corvette and Tahoe (not pictured below). The group was split into 5 small teams, we were tossed our keys, got a brief instruction on how to use the OnStar system, which was already pre-set for the Chevy Pizza Crawl and the destinations we’d go to, and off we went.
Antonio’s Pizza-Rant
First up was Antonio’s in Davie, FL. The pizza there reminded me of how my late grandma Anne made her dough, with just a little bit of sugar in it to sweeten it up and a thin crust that made you go back for another slice (and I did). Unfortunately, it didn’t have a lot of seasoning, so other than the crust, it was a standard cheese pizza. They also seemed to think of the Chevy Pizza Crawl as just a business lunch and didn’t do what the following restaurants did (more to follow). One cheese pizza per table, some drinks, and that was about it without any interaction from the staff other than getting our soda. Moving on.
Pizza Fusion
Thanks to being located right by my new digs in Downtown Fort Lauderdale, I was already familiar with this place. Pizza Fusion focuses on renewable materials (such as the recycled packaging and menus, HCFL lighting, anything “green” with a purpose), high-quality organic ingredients, and does away with all the processed crap that gets thrown into mass-produced pizzas. Their pizzas come with many options including multi-grain crust that doesn’t make you want to spit it out after realizing it actually is multi-grain. (Seriously, most of the time I pick up on anything with multi-grain flour right away and focus on the fact that it tastes like crap.)
Upon getting to the location on Sunrise and US-1, they had the pies ready for us without delay. There we got to sample 4-5 different pies, my favorite being the four cheese pizza with sun-dried tomatoes, fresh basil, goat cheese and everything else. This pizza was actually on a white crust, but I went back yesterday to get it on the multi-grain crust and loved it!
On a side note, Pizza Fusion gets social, and it shows almost immediately. If you talk about them on Twitter, they’ll get back to you, even if you’re not targeting them specifically by including ‘@PizzaFusion.’ If you have a problem and tell them about it, they’re on the case. If you say you’re going to the restaurant later in the day, you’ll get a nice greeting to tell you to enjoy the experience. If you check in to the location with Foursquare, you are told 4 more check-ins and you get a nice discount (or is that a free pizza?)!
Slice Pizzeria
I’ll admit, I was a little biased in favor of Slice Pizzeria since we get lunch from them occasionally at AgencyNet. (Their Philly Cheesesteak is AWESOME! Don’t let a pizzeria front fool you, they usually rock at one more thing than just the pies.) They seated us in the back with lots of room and along with the pizza came the smiles from their awesomely-attentive employees. Their pizza was delicious, and then they gave us some garlic rolls, free Icees, a free tee-shirt and a frequent visitor card with 5 of the stamps already taken care of for us! After taking a picture with the owner, we were on our way to the next stop.
Amici’s Pizza Cafe
Next up was Amici’s Pizza Cafe in Coconut Creek, a nice little pizza cafe with neat decor, great pizza and even better meatballs! After some jokes were thrown around about the latter among the group, we were treated to delicious homemade tiramisu and were given a free bottle of wine as a parting gift! It’s like each restaurant was watching our updates to figure out how they’d beat the last stop, and it seemed like that was working!
Sicilian Oven
The last stop was in Coral Springs at the Sicilian Oven. This location used to be a DiSalvos, and was redressed with stone, brick, great lighting and flat screen TVs to make a pizzeria upscale and friendly. They gave us a great 3-course, 2-pizza dinner, starting off with their tossed salad with a bunch of awesome ingredients, then their grilled wings (which honestly reminded me a lot of Anthony’s Coal Fired Pizza’s grilled wings) and then a few pies.
Finishing Up
At the Sicilian Oven, they held the raffle for the group for categories like “Funniest Tweet,” “Best Team Spirit,” “Best Review,” and so on. I got a $25 gift certificate to Slice Pizzeria and Lori got a $25 gift certificate for Pizza Fusion! Two certificates I think we’ll be using sooner than later!
The Chevy Pizza Crawl event did a great deal to turn my opinion around on Chevy. Instead of being aggressive with their marketing and trying to sell us the cars, they let us do our event without any hindrances or brainwashing. After driving/riding around in 4 of the 5 cars (sadly, I never stepped food in the Corvette), I was impressed on how they turned their cars’ quality around given the tough economy and government involvement. Chevy looks like they’re in it to win, and if that’s a good indication, I may just be picking up an Equinox when my funds allow it.
Thanks for everyone involved who put this event together, it was terrific fun and I definitely recommend you guys try to apply for the next one whenever it’s announced!
(Photos used in this post have been yanked from Jarret Streiner.)
Want to attend the next Chevy Pizza Crawl? Stay tuned for more information on WorstPizza.com or via @WorstPizza on Twitter.
