The “adopt, don’t shop” movement has always been pretty strong, and it turns out that there are a lot of different ways to promote adopting pets from shelters instead of shopping around.

The owner of a pizza place in Western New York might have figured out the most awesome and creative way yet.

They use their own pizza boxes to put photos of shelter dogs on them.

They hope that some extra promotion can help them get adopted.

Who knew that the combination of pets and pizza would prove to be so successful?

The idea actually came from a no-kill shelter in Niagara Falls, New York called Niagara SPCA.

Just Pizza is a local pizza chain that’s definitely loved by the locals, and it’s a pretty popular food hot-spot.

These two companies decided to team up and work together to make sure that animals who were in need of a home would get as many opportunities as possible.

The idea is as simple as it is brilliant: they just put flyers with the shelter animals on their pizza boxes.

In fact, the flyers were such a great success that the shelter, in general, became much more popular as well. The picture below is an example of one of these pizza boxes, it shows an adorable 5-year-old pup named Hooch.

“Please adopt me! My name is Hooch and I’m 5. I live at Niagara SPCA. I’d like to live with you,” the flyer reads.

The concept quickly spread and tons of posts were being made on social media to share the dogs in hopes to find them forever homes.

A little bit shocked by the response, the pizza place decided to sweeten the deal even further.

Anyone who adopted one of the “pizza pups” will receive a $50 gift certificate for a local restaurant.

In a pizza restaurant, you can definitely go a long way with fifty bucks.

And if you’re a cat person, don’t worry. The Niagara SPCA actually announced an update to its “Pizza Pets” program, and it now includes adorable felines as well.

“Ask and you shall receive! Not only will you see adoptable dogs on the Just Pizza & Wing Co. Amherst, NY Location boxes, you will now find adoptable cats!” the shelter recently announced.

The whole program became so big that they even started selling merchandise for it!

After all, who wouldn’t want to wear one of these amazing “Pizza Pups” shirts with a pizza-eating dog on it?

The owner of the Amherst Just Pizza & Wing Co restaurant, Mary Alloy, was introduced to the idea by the shelter event coordinator Kimberly LaRussa.

“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 said to CNN. “We are all animal lovers here, so I got permission from the franchise to do it and immediately got to work.”

After the very first day of the campaign, one of the pups was adopted!

As you can imagine, plenty of more pups and cats have been adopted thanks to this amazing initiative, and all of these animals probably wouldn’t have found a loving forever home so quickly if it wasn’t for the pizza program.

The adoptions can go quickly!

In fact, sometimes they even have to cancel printing flyers because they’ve already found a home!

According to Mary, some people even order a pizza just to get one of the shelter photos, and the word of mouth on social media is pretty important to the campaign’s success, of course.

“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.”

To learn more about this nifty pet adoption campaign, watch the video below.

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Source: Bored Panda, Niagara County SPCA via Facebook, Just PIZZA & Wing Co. via Facebook, CNN, WKBW News