In December, a crew of workers in Bartonville, Texas, set about fixing the potholes in the town. They filled in eight holes, and at the end of a hard day’s work they shared a couple of pizzas. There was nothing particularly remarkable about the job, except for the logo painted on the side of the equipment, on the cones used to stop traffic and even spray-painted on the freshly laid asphalt: Domino’s Pizza.

Bartonville is one of four towns where the fast-food company has partnered with local administrations in order to help fix their broken roads. The project, called Paving for Pizza, is the first time Domino’s have worked with local government to attempt an infrastructure project, although anyone who has experienced one of their thick, viscous cheese slices sinking to the bottom of their stomach might not be entirely surprised to learn that they’re moving into the cement business.

Domino’s claim they’re making the move because potholes and bumps in the road can cause “irreversible damage to your pizza”. They even shoved a GoPro inside a pizza box to show how harmful potholes can be to your large pepperoni with extra cheese.

The more likely reason for the sudden move into road repair is good publicity. The campaign was created by the CP+B ad agency, which specialises in drumming up media interest, claiming on their website to make the “most written about, talked about, and outrageously successful work in the world”. The loose connection between roads and pizza delivery is just enough to give Domino’s justification to engage in a major campaign to demonstrate the company’s social conscience.

That’s not to say America couldn’t do with some help with its road system. The most recent set of studies by the National Transportation Research Group found that 37% of America’s major roads are in poor or mediocre condition. Driving on these damaged roads costs American drivers $107bn each year, around $482 per driver, with most of that money going on vehicle repair costs.

So far, Domino’s has made very little dent in that problem: across the four towns they’ve worked in they’ve fixed a couple of hundred potholes, but the majority of those were in Athens, Georgia. In Burbank, California, they fixed just five, funding five workers to work for eight hours.

They say they’re going to fix more, and are allowing people to nominate towns on their website. So if you’ve got a pothole outside your house it might be worth dropping them a line, aso long as you live on a picturesque avenue that will look good on an advert.