Papa John's Pizza -- $1 billion sales online & by text

Now this is a rather interesting statistic — Papa John’s, one of the most popular pizza delivery chains in America transacted over $400m online and by text message (press release).

Unfortunately the release doesn’t break down the text percentage of revenue. I’d estimate maybe 0.5% of that $1 billion was by text. What do you think? I’ve nothing to benchmark and it’s a statistic I’d love to have and I doubt Papa John’s will reveal. 0.5% of a billion is $50m. For a moment, assuming that this is anywhere near accurate, that would be a staggering figure.

I tried calling their PR number for clarity on the online/text split but, alas, it went to voicemail. They should have got Spinvox, eh?

Actually, texting is quite a new thing for Papa Johns:

And in November 2007, Papa John’s took the convenience of online ordering one step further when it became the first national pizza company to offer SMS/text ordering for customers throughout the U.S. Customers who have set up their favorite orders at papajohns.com can text their orders to 4PAPA in just a couple of easy clicks.

Having ordered with Papa John’s in the UK sometime back in 2007, I remember being very impressed at getting text updates from them when they’d received my order and when it was on it’s way. Try’em out if you have time: Papajohns.com or Papajohns.co.uk.