By: Chris Brubaker
I am a giant pizza lover, given the option I will pick pizza over anything else…anything. So you probably wouldn’t be surprised by how excited I was to be able to order pizza anytime anywhere simply by texting. The pizza industry is finally following suit of many other industries such as real estate (HouseFront) or the airline industry. Bringing this to the pizza industry in the US first is Papa John’s.
By texting to 4PAPA (47272) you can have a pizza delivered to your home or available for pickup. To use the system you have to set up an account with Papa John’s online. From there you can create up to four different pizza combinations, everything in the store is available (such as soda, breadsticks, even extra sauces). Once you have everything set up all you have to do is text “FAV” to 4PAPA, and you will receive back a list of all your favorites allowing you to pick what you want to order.
Papa John’s currently has around 7 percent of the US pizza market and with this new ordering system they are looking to capitalize on the youth market. Papa John’s has had great success in expanding its ordering system; in 2001 they revolutionized pizza ordering by bring it to the Internet (currently 20 percent of the company’s orders come in over the Internet). Now with SMS the company is again looking to bring change to pizza ordering, providing consumers with more ways to order. If this system works, I’d expect to see other companies in the food industry pick up SMS, everything from sandwich delivery to Chinese food (think of the possibilities).
Now, the next time I’m heading home from work and I want to pick up something really good for dinner (i.e. pizza) all I have to do is text into Papa John’s, and my pizza will be waiting when I get home…I can’t think of a better use of text messaging.
As a quick note, Dominos is also offering a similar text message service but it is currently only available in the UK.
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