Facebook Food Ordering: Papa Johns the Pioneer

October 25, 2017

Pizza is the universal convenience food. At first, you could call on the phone to order a large pizza and have it delivered just as you get home. Then came the internet. Find any pizza chain’s website and you can view their entire menu or even build your own pie! The next step was mobile-ordering via apps. Open the app, text, call or make an order through your smart phone with as much customization as you want. Now, you can order through social media. What a time we live in!

Papa Johns has become the first pizza chain to offer such capabilities, and with good reason. The Louisville-based pizza delivery chain, has been in a fierce race for digital supremacy with rival Domino’s Pizza Inc. And all this competition is what sparked the birth of Facebook ordering. This now enables consumers to go Papa John’s page on the Facebook app and start an order by clicking on the large button that states, ‘START ORDER.’ “It’s so simple and clean,” Brandon Rhoten, Papa John’s global chief marketing officer, said in an interview.

Customers can access Papa John’s Facebook “Instant Experience” through several entry points to order food without leaving the app. The company is offering customers 25 percent off for trying the capability. The new ordering platform continues Papa John’s digital efforts as pizza chains increasingly compete not over the ingredients in the pizza but in the ease of their ordering.

As a result, Papa John’s and Domino’s both get 60 percent of their orders through digital channels.

Think about that.

What percentage of your business is through digital versus in-store? We live in a digital age. And that trend is not going away.

As a business owner, what can we learn from what is happening?

The world is going digital. Convenience and accessibility are key. Do you have a website? Is it mobile-friendly? Does your restaurant have a Facebook business page? All three of the questions above are becoming the standard. And if you said ‘no’ to any of these questions, its guaranteed you are losing potential revenue to a competitor.
Facebook will be the new battleground for food options. Although this capability is in it’s infancy, it will be sure to grow, and grow very fast. You have to keep your ear to the ground and jump at the opportunity to be in the forefront of the innovation pack.

Positioning yourself for success is key to any business. And that is why we are here: to bring you the trends and new capabilities to capture business. Whether this trend becomes the norm or not, wouldn’t you rather be winning the race than struggling to catch up?

Need to pass the time between our next post? Then check out Custom Business Solutions for all your restaurant technology needs!