Pizza and a movie with DVDs Too

AUG. 4 | Start-up distributor DVDs Too is pitching pizza restaurants to add disc rentals to their food offerings.

Based in New York, DVDs Too will service a limited selection of any given week's top new release titles. Pizzerias would pay wholesale costs for as many copies as they wish to purchase, and they keep all rental revenue generated. Restaurants are expected to charge customers about $4.99 to rent a film for three days, and varying late fees accrue following that period.

Titles are delivered to customers at home along with their pizzas. Customers also are given envelopes with pre-paid postage to return the movies.

DVDs Too will regularly replenish pizza places with fresh titles, taking back the old discs at no charge to restaurants. Eventually, DVD Too will sell the previously viewed titles through other retailers. Currently available titles for pizzeria rentals include Million Dollar Baby and Hitch.

A handful of pizza restaurants in Chicago, San Francisco, New York and Canada are offering discs through DVD Too. But no major chain has signed on yet.

However, DVD Too thinks its business plan will prove attractive to many of the 80,000 pizza outlets in the U.S.

"The key word is go," DVD Too director Walt Kaon said. "You have to go to McDonald's. You have to go to the video store. You have to wait for Netflix [titles to arrive]. This is a convenience. You don't have to go anywhere. You just call and get a movie in about 30 minutes."

Many pizza chains have played around with the idea of offering films. In September 2004, Papa John's handed customers a free DVD when they purchased a large Spinach Alfredo Chicken Tomato pizza. Titles involved in the offer included catalog movies Corrina! Corrina! and Drop Dead Fred.