Tuesday, December 02, 2008

Papa John's generates $1m in sales in the USA

 papajohns

I've just been reading about Papa John's foray into mobile commerce over at Mobile Marketer.

"Pizza chain Papa John’s International Inc. has generated more than $1 million in sales from mobile Web orders in less than six months after offering that option to consumers.

The milestone comes after Papa John’s earlier this year crossed more than $1 billion in overall online sales – up from $400 million in 2007 – and launched a Facebook page that quickly attracted 175,000-plus fans in less than a week. The mobile commerce push led to the introduction yesterday of an iphone site for Papa John’s."

So it looks like Papa John's is doing pretty well then. 1% of overall sales via mobile sounds about right to me. And no mean feat to accomplish that within 6 months of launch.

You can see the mobile site at http://www.mobile.papajohns.com. It's completely reliant on setting up an account with Papa John's which can all be done from your phone and once registered you can link through to your local Papa John's menu and delivery options. You can also use the related SMS service once you've created an account. It remembers your favourite pizzas so reordering is faster.

At the moment about 20% of all orders are via digital channels, including mobile but the powers that be suggest that digital channels may overtake voice pretty soon.

The also note that the digital orderers of pizza are typical Papa John's customers and are not specifically youth or after smaller orders (which makes sense to me as you do have to register and can't just order off the cuff - of course once registered, it's easier the next time). And I suspect the iphone application is even easier to use. And of course it makes perfect sense. You can order your pizza from the bus or train on your way home and you arrive home at the same time as your pizza. Brilliant! Certainly less annoying than shouting your order down the phone with the rest of the passengers listening in to what you're going to have for dinner.

Admittedly, I don't order pizzas very often, but I just might if it was that simple to do from my phone already without having to hunt for the leaflet that got stuck through the door and probably went straight into my recycling bin anyway.

I remember talking to Papa John's agency in the UK many moons ago about a very similar service but the idea was ditched in favour of printing more leaflets. But then that's another story...

2 comments:

  1. Nice little piece of news. Seems like Papa John's (shame I've never tried it.. ) is ahead in the mobile game. I'm already looking forward to this, but I think this will be a while. Internet orders on food deliveries are still in their infancy here in Crete, Greece, but I have to say that the one site (reference available) that offers online ordering also allows orders via SMS. Which, for our current standards is pretty impressive, though I imagine certainly underused. Still cool though. I sometimes order via SMS just because it's so easy, though I prefer the web because I can add more information about a customized order.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Nice, and 1 million is a lot of money. It however isn't 1% of 1 billion, but 1/10th percent (or 1000th of the total).

    ReplyDelete

Keep it clean please. Spam will be removed. And thank you for taking the trouble to read and comment. I appreciate it.