Dive Brief:
- Papa Johns has partnered with Walmart to offer delivery of its pizzas, sides and desserts using Walmart Express Delivery from restaurants near Walmart stores, according to a Thursday press release.
- Delivery through Walmart will be offered in select markets starting this fall, before expanding to thousands of participating locations nationwide.
- Papa Johns is the latest chain to partner with Walmart to offer delivery services. Last week, Dunkin’ partnered with the retailer to offer delivery from 150 Dunkin’ restaurants within Walmarts and later Dunkin’ units outside of the retailer.
Dive Insight:
Walmart began offering restaurant delivery in June when it partnered with Subway, its largest in-store restaurant tenant, to let consumers place Subway orders through Walmart’s app or Walmart.com.
Eligible customers can find and order from Papa Johns via the restaurant tab on Walmart’s app or website. The tab was added following Walmart’s partnership with Subway. Customers can bundle their pizza orders with Walmart items or just order Papa Johns menu items on their own.
“By bringing our focus on quality to Walmart Express Delivery, we’re giving customers an opportunity to try Papa Johns in new occasions as they shop, while also introducing the brand to new people,” Chris Lyn-Sue, Papa Johns’ global chief marketing officer, said in a statement.
Bringing in new customers could help improve Papa John’s same-store sales, which have waned in recent quarters as pizza chains have become less popular among consumers as the proliferation of restaurant types available for delivery has reduced the sector’s historical advantage in that channel.
Papa Johns has also focused on its third-party delivery channels of late, particularly as those aggregators have become more crowded as other pizza chains, like Domino’s, increasingly use aggregators to drive sales.
Papa Johns originally entered the third-party delivery space about five years ago to help address delivery driver shortages. As of the second quarter, third-party delivery transactions were down in the low-single digits, Papa Johns President and CEO Todd Penegor said during an August earnings call.
Penegor said the company is being more cognizant of the money it spends on third-party delivery and that there is an opportunity “to make those dollars work harder with promotions.”
“We've got some small things that we can do on how our brand shows up from a visibility perspective in [third party], but we've got good visibility into the things we need to do to check and adjust to compete even stronger in that channel,” Penegor said. “We do think it's a great channel to provide some visibility and opportunity into our innovation to get the consumer to trial us.”
