Posted by Jeremy Scott in Uncategorized | 3 Comments
Need Cash? Start A Pizza Website
I can just see John from those Papa Johns commercials, doing his best Dr. Evil impression: “One… Billion… Dollars.”
That is a heck of a lot of pizza, too. If you figure $12 bucks a pie, that works out to about 83 Million pizzas.
Now, it’s probably not going to be easy for you to start a pizza website and make that kind of cash. For starters, you’d need a network of brick-and-mortar pizza shops across the US to be able to fill the online orders… and Papa Johns had that built in before they started.
But man, who knew that you could make that kind of money from a pizza website?
They’re on a torrid pace, too, and will make their next $1 Billion in half the time it took to make their first. From the article:
“It took us seven years to reach our first billion in online sales, and at our current pace and growth rate it will take us less than three years to hit our next billion,” said Jim Ensign, vice president of marketing communications at Papa John’s.
It would be interesting to see how much of this online revenue is new, as opposed to coming from customers who were already buying pizza in the traditional method. I imagine there’s more new business there than you might think, simply because they’ve made the ordering process so convenient.
Almost all the major pizza chains have online ordering capabilities now, and most even let you order via text message… making pizza an impulse-buy item more and more everyday. Pretty soon I expect to be able to order a pie by merely thinking about a warm, delicious pizza. Until then… online or text ordering is the fastest method available.
It’s a VERY well done system. I’ve ordered pizza at papajohns.com five or six times and not a single hiccup. (the lesson is: don’t rush to market, test thoroughly…they could have been doing this ten years ago, but didn’t…because nobody, least of all Papa John’s was ready.)
Honestly, their online ordering system is extremely well designed. It’s faster and more efficient than calling, and all of the special deals they are offering are displayed the moment you log in. Advanced orders, special requests, their system has been designed to handle it all.
I look forward to more delivery places expanding into the online order system, assuming they can design their interface as well as Papa John’s did. The time has come.
I prefer to order online, and only from Papa John’s. I am 99.0% satisfied with the ordering process. However, the promo codes don’t always work, and the special deals don’t always match up with the menu. For instance, when I order the Family (or Titans) Special, I am unable to order the “white pizza.” However, I can phone in and get the deal. At least the individual store still answers the phone and takes the order, unlike some other places where you get a call center! Other than that, it’s great, and you can always be sure the order is correct.