Dr. Oetker
Cioccolato’s Pizzeria

The Challenge

The frozen pizza category is hugely competitive, with over 70 SKUs of pizza to choose from – all of them price promoted on a weekly basis. Coupled with so many pizza choices out of the grocery store (Domino’s, Pizza Pizza, Pizza Nova), it is a constant battle to gain not only shelf space, but space in people’s minds. So the last thing Canadians needed was another pizza. But they were getting one anyway - Ristorante Cioccolato. And this wasn’t just any pizza - it was a chocolate “pizza” made of chocolate crust, chocolate chips, and white chocolate.

The Insight

Every food brand is trying to leverage their “authenticity” these days as millennials are looking more and more for brands with substance and roots, particularly with the food that they eat. In the pizza category, this means cleaner ingredients or ingredients inspired by the old country, or “healthier” ingredients like thin crusts and/or more premium toppings. But Ristorante Cioccolato had zero pizza authenticity. The brand decided to play the joke out and made a chocolate pizzeria.

The One-line Idea

Welcome to Cioccolato’s – the pizzeria made of chocolate that makes chocolate pizzas.

The Plan

The proposed timing of the launch, winter, wasn’t ideal for something you’d expect to get on the Midway at the Ex, but there was one day in winter that made sense for such an indulgent treat – Valentine’s Day. After all, what’s Valentine’s Day without chocolate?

So in the latter part of 2017, Dr. Oetker posted cryptic questions on Instagram and Facebook asking people to post what they wished was made of chocolate, with the hashtag #chocolatedreams. The feedback from the social posts would fuel much of the interior design of the pizzeria.

In the meantime, a retailer designer, a chocolatier, and an architect were briefed to create a pizzeria that would mimic exactly what you might find in a real pizzeria – complete with a pizza oven, tables, chairs, lighting, tableware, and the works. Except with one slight difference –everything, had to be made of chocolate.

The brief to the PR company was simple: put Cioccolato’s into the same class as the fanciest, most romantic restaurant on Valentine’s Day. The media plan was to pour as much of the media dollars into the opening of the pizzeria and used earned media and social to get the word out from there.

The Results

Unbelievably, a pizza with no cheese and no tomato sauce was Dr. Oetker’s second highest selling SKU in the month of the launch. It is also the 12th highest selling frozen pizza in Canada in a category with as many as 77 different SKUs.

The campaign generated over 12 million media impressions - almost 10 million in the first week of the campaign – and Trendhunter called Cioccolato’s even “sexier than lingerie”. Thousands of people visited the pop-up restaurant at Queen and Ossington in person during its ten day opening.

Demand was so great in the month after the launch that the brand had difficulty keeping Ristorante Cioccolato in stock until it could ramp up production to meet demand. Chocolate Dreams really do come true.