Shelters work hard to encourage people to pay them a visit and adopt their pets. But sometimes the best strategy isn’t to get people to come see the animals, but to bring the animals to them.
Sharing photos of cats and dogs looking for homes can be a great way to get the word out about these animals in need—and one shelter found a very clever way to make sure their dogs would be seen by their community:
They put them on pizza boxes!
The cool idea was a collaboration between the Niagara SPCA and Just Pizza & Wings in Amherst, New York.
Everybody likes pizza, so it seems like a great way to get the word out to all kinds of customers… and maybe spruce up those cardboard boxes.
“Pizza boxes are pretty plain, and so you add a shelter dog to it and it adds a little fun to it,” Kimberly LaRussa, the event coordinator at the Niagara SPCA, told WKBW.
The shelter and the pizza joint may seem like unlikely partners, but they do have one thing in common: Mary Alloy, the owner of the pizza franchise who is also an enthusiastic volunteer at the SPCA.
She’s always done everything she could to use her restaurant as a way to help the shelter, like putting out donation boxes, but Kimberly pitched an even bigger way to help.
“Kimberly texted me one night and was like, ‘Hey, what would you think about putting pictures of the dogs on pizza boxes?’ and I just couldn’t wait,” Mary told CNN.
“We are all animal lovers here, so I got permission from the franchise to do it and immediately got to work.”
It didn’t take long for this promotion to become a hit. People loved seeing these cute dogs on their pizza boxes.
“We’ve had a tremendous amount of interest and support from the community and beyond since the story went viral on Friday,” Kimberly said.
“Many people want to order a pizza just to get the shelter dog photo, other pizzerias have offered to put flyers on their pizza boxes, and so many people are tagging their friends and family.”
As the story went viral, Just Pizza & Wings even threw in another promotion: they’d give a $50 gift certificate to anyone who adopts a pet.
And remarkably, the plan seems to be working already: Larry, one of the dogs featured on the pizza boxes last week, was adopted!
“It very well could because people are sharing these flyers all over social media, so perhaps someone saw it and adopted Larry,” Kimberly told WKBW.
That’s an incredible result, and it’s only the beginning. Mary and Kimberly are hoping that this collaboration will help all their animals find good homes.
“We’re just going to keep on doing it till they’re all adopted,” Mary said. “I just hope that maybe one day we can walk into the the shelter and have all the cages cleared. That is what I hope comes out of this.”
We’re so glad this great promotion is already working and making a big difference in these animals’ lives! Hopefully it will inspire even more people to give these dogs a forever home!
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