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reprinted from uk pizza pasta & italian food magazine
As we have already seen, the dividing line between what constitutes a pizzeria, a pizza delivery outlet or an all day café is no longer a clearly defined one, with independents such as Amano and Nuvo both offering elements of all three types of foodservice operation.
With their all embracing corporate looks, rules and procedures, you could be forgiven for thinking that the chains might be slower to roll out any significant meal offering additions to their product portfolios. However, recently the Papa John’s chain have not only added a ‘grab and go’ coffee and sub roll sandwich option to their 
flagship Addlestone store near their UK headquarters in Chertsey, but are poised to add a sit down eating area too (something they have already done at their Weymouth site, and plan to do at two sites in Croydon).
In advance of Papa John’s official launch of their new sit down concept across more outlets later in the year (of 23 openings planned for 2005, they intend for 12 to have seating), Pizza Pasta & Italian Food magazine found out more about it, as well as some of the other changes taking place from the company’s MD in the UK.
All change
“The current pizza business in the UK is a fragmented one,” says Daniel Cousineau, who can boast a 20 year career in the pizza business, including a lengthy spell with rivals, Domino’s. “A lot of the independents effectively control the biggest slice of the market here. Over the next ten years I think that we shall see lots of changes, not least because of developments in this particular sector, but as result of the activities of the bigger chains as they try to increase their market share by either getting some of these successful independents to sign up, or by acquiring the sites of failing ones.”
Back in 1999, US-based Papa John’s was itself an acquirer of an independent – the UK’s first, home-grown pizza brand, Perfect Pizza. 115 Perfect Pizza outlets still remain trading successfully, notably in a cluster around the Midlands where Daniel Cousineau suspects that people have a taste for Perfect Pizza’s signature 
thicker, deep pan bases, and this loyal following is something the company know differentiates the Perfect Pizza brand from those who favour Papa John’s thinner base pizzas.
“We also have plans later this year for our Perfect Pizza outlets to start to be upgraded,” Daniel Cousineau reveals, and for 2005, estimates that just three Perfect Pizza sites will be converted to Papa John’s. “We fully recognise that not all of these types of operation are in a position financially to carry out the conversion to our new look. So with these outlets we will be looking at pushing the value by adding offers and promotions that will appeal to the value-seekers who are the typical customers of these outlets.”
The proposed Perfect Pizza upgrade will not involve massive investments, certainly not as radical or expensive as an overhaul. For the latter, it costs in the region of £250,000 to help fund items such as plasma screen TVs, substantial new signage, as well as a new shop front, and now presumably the extra items associated with the grab and go option such as the counters and coffee machine.
Papa John’s attitude to its Perfect Pizza outlets (outlets that Daniel Cousineau says they still intend to sell to a smaller, independent operator at some point) makes it evident that this US-headquartered company has been forced to accept that in certain areas. And with certain UK franchisees, they have a steady, winning formula that satisfies value-seeking customers, and that doesn’t need to be tinkered with too much.
“The profile of the franchisee is different for each of our brands,” Daniel Cousineau explains. “At the moment I have to say that we are happy with our ability to attract new franchisees to the new look stores - franchisees who are prepared to open multiple sites. We currently receive about 45 enquiries a week, and right now we are particularly interested in training a smaller number of franchisees who we know will be in a position to open up multiple sites.”
All day extras
Papa John’s new grab and go concept and sit down concept will be the most noticeable changes to most outsiders, but look closer and there are more ‘extras’ coming on line too, such as the self-serve, high quality coffee machine that dispenses creamy cappuccinos, and also at Addlestone, the option to sit outside, eat soup or perhaps pasta, plus the opportunity to take a healthy, fresh fruit dessert away with you as well as your usual pizza.
Put all of these developments together, and your local Papa John’s pizza delivery outlet (with the right demographics), can steadily start transforming itself into your local ‘one stop’, all day café, able to cater for a variety of eating requirements and range of customers. It will be interesting to see how its direct competitors (that now include some of the coffee chains) respond.
“We are aiming for our all day concept to take the customer through from the morning, when croissants and coffee are on the menu, to lunchtime with soups and salads and our new sandwich deals. Pizza is available all day, but as you would expect, really starts to pick up in demand by four and five each day,” explains Daniel Cousineau. “The stores will look full of food. With this increased product offering I believe that we are in a far stronger position than some of the coffee chains currently are, should they want to up their food offering. We already have the necessary planning approval for our sites, approval that won’t necessarily have been acquired in order to just set up and serve coffee.”
The biggest challenge of this all day type of operation, says Daniel Cousineau, will be managing the staff, and their skill sets. As he points out, the morning staff serving croissants and items from the counter, are carrying out far different tasks to the evening staff who are preparing and cooking pizzas.
Grab and go, or a sociable sit down?
Papa John’s is preparing for increased competition and a more diverse marketplace in the coming years by implementing its changes sooner rather than later, and is arguably stealing a march on some of the other pizza chains who you might think are already deploying some of Papa John’s ideas, but in actual fact aren’t.
Papa John’s sit down concept (currently being successfully road tested “under the radar”, as Daniel Cousineau terms it, in Weymouth, a location far removed from the higher profile, but food concept-infested London), for example, is not about individual, separate tables, as you might find at Pizza Hut, but rather rows of long tables with benches either side to make for a far more sociable kind of sit down, pizza-eating experience.
This new environment for pizza-eaters, says Daniel Cousineau, can be thought of as being more akin to the communal Wagamama (Japanese noodle bar) principle.
“It is my hope that people will interact as a result of our new sit down concept,” he says. “So far the feedback from our Weymouth store is very good, where one half of the store is devoted to grab and go, take-away or delivery, and the other half is devoted to a sit down area. I would like to think that families who perhaps already know each other will be able to meet up and occupy a table together, or individuals who stop by will start talking over a pizza in an informal but sociable atmosphere and environment where they can eat as much or as little as they wish. I feel that this type of development, with an emphasis on the social aspect, makes our offering an attractive one and, importantly, serves to re-invent our brand, which is what it’s all about.”
Listening to Daniel Cousineau’s talk about his ideas, it is not hard to imagine how he has been influenced by what he has seen on his travels in other countries, as well as in his homeland of Canada. The US, too, has had its influence – a place where the welcoming diner, furnished with chairs and tables and bar-type areas issued with an array of sauces, await you in almost every neighbourhood.
Delivery to decline?
“One effect of the uptake of our grab and go option, as well as our sit down outlets, could well be a decline in pizza delivery,” Daniel Cousineau admits. “It could become an issue, a ‘distraction’ if you like, in that we end up generating more non-delivery pizza orders than delivery ones. And of course in terms of overheads it’s costlier to provide a delivery service than it is to provide the sit down area. It may well be that we get to the stage where our new concepts are generating more revenue for us than the delivery of pizza. However, we need to be cautious over how we deal with this.”
On the subject of delivery, Daniel Cousineau acknowledges that there has been a major change on the part of the consumer, and how they are prepared to view it in terms of its perceived value.
“Sometimes I wonder if customers ever really appreciated exactly what was involved in getting a pizza delivery to their door. Customers would just ring up a number and expect a pizza delivery. They didn’t particularly care how, or where it came from! These days, the imagery of the store is very important. Customers are more and more concerned about where their pizza has come from. The look of the store affects their decision-making process.”
High standards
By taking such an instrumental role in helping to shape and redefine what it is customers want, Papa John’s will clearly be in a position to set the standards for the future. This, Daniel Cousineau asserts, will help give them an edge in terms of their commitment to delivering their core brand aims of high product quality and good customer service. He is also talking about the possibility of selling the rights to Papa John’s for certain areas with the UK (London or Leeds, for example), having already sold the rights for Papa John’s to Pat McDonagh (the man behind Supermac) in Ireland.
In the US, it is worth noting that for the last six years Papa John’s has been voted the best pizza delivery operator in terms of customer satisfaction, and last year they won PAPA’s best operator award, suggesting that over the next few years Papa John’s will prove to be an impressive act to follow.