Peso-accepting pizza chain receives death threats


What started out as a simple, friendly, multi-cultural marketing ploy has drawn the ire of pizza purists all across the nation, as a medium-sized pie chain has stepped right in the middle of the somewhat hostile immigrant debate.

Dallas-based Pizza Patron, which claims a 60% Hispanic customer base, last week announced that it would begin accepting Mexican pesos at its 59 restaurants. This seems fine enough: Texas-area Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s (NYSE:WMT) and other businesses along the Rio Grande have been accepting the Mexican currency for years, while up north a similar arrangement exists with Canadian dollars. But Pizza Patron claims locations in Colorado, Arizona and Nevada -- which, last checked, is not exactly peso country -- would accept the foreign currency as well.

"This is the United States of America, not the United States of Mexico," one critical e-mail read. "Quit catering to the damn illegal Mexicans," demanded another.

Says Patricia Perez, a partner at Valencia, Perez & Echeveste in Los Angeles, "Right now there's a lot of anti-immigrant rhetoric going around that could make them a lightning rod."

Pizza Patron founder Antonio Swad (who, incidentally, is Italian/Lebanese) says the promotion will run through the end of February and then be re-evaluated. At which point they may, or may not, accept chocolate coins.

B. Brandon Barker is the author of Operation EMU

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