Maine Pizza Maker So Popular It Holds a ‘Pizza Lottery’ (Better Odds Than the Powerball, We Hope)

Photo: ThitareeSarmkasat (Getty Images)

Maine is called “Vacationland” for a reason. During the summer months, the state gets clogged up with tourists from all over the US and the rest of the world looking to experience the craggy coastline, quaint towns, delicious seafood, and picturesque beaches. One of these quaint towns is Brooksville, Maine, and it’s gaining notoriety for its pizza — or rather, a pizza lottery.

During the summer, this town of under 1,000 residents explodes with tourists visiting the local stores and restaurants. One of the most popular establishments in this town is a place called Tinder Hearth Bakery. And while they make various popular baked goods, nothing is more eagerly awaited than the twice-per-week wood-fired pizzas.

For most of the year, you can pop in and grab a pizza on the days they’re making them. But not during the summer months. Since they only make 150 each night, these pizzas have become so popular that the bakery has been forced to resort to extreme measures to ensure they don’t have long lines of sad tourists who wait for hours and don’t even end up getting a pizza before they run out. They’ve instituted a pizza lottery. Yes, you read that right. A pizza lottery.

Instead of having customers call over and over again in an effort to get a prized pizza, the bakery has added an online request form. So, instead of calling your local pizza place and then waiting for it to arrive 30 minutes later, if you want a pizza in this vacation destination, you fill out the form and then wait by the phone to see if you’re randomly selected.

While we’ve never had this pizza and don’t know just how great it is, we do know that there are plenty of pizza chains with easy online ordering sites that definitely won’t make you sit by your phone waiting to hear whether or not you’ll go hungry tonight.