A pizzeria milestone of sorts has been set by the Papa John’s chain showing that successful restaurateurs today must fully embrace the new online technologies available to them. Although Papa John's is the No. 3 ranked pizza franchise, the company has surpassed the $2 billion online ordering mark faster than any other pizza company worldwide. Papa John's online sales have shown steady growth at over 50 percent each year since 2001.There are more ways to sell pizza than just waiting for customers or answering the phone and executives at Papa John’s believe their online/Internet sales will soon surpass traditional telephone orders.
Just weeks after Pizza Hut execs projected their stores would top $2 billion in online sales by the end of the year, Papa John's announced they had already surpassed the figure.
Papa John's hit $1 billion in online ordering sales in 2008 and executives at the firm predicted it might take another three years to hit $2 billion. Papa John's attributes their success to their ongoing improvements to the company’s website and upgrading the customer ordering experience. Features like 24-hour online ordering availability, a Spanish-language version of the company website and a separate mobile website for ordering at mobile.papajohns.com helped Papa John’s double their results in just one year.
In a separate statement, No. 1 pizza company Pizza Hut, did not give figures for their total online ordering sales, but the company did say that online ordering was the fastest-growing sales segment for their stores in 2009.
