New products pop up as pizza leaders seek a larger slice of the pie

Nation's Restaurant News, June 25, 2001 by Gregg Cebrzynski

The campaign was designed to reinforce Papa John's quality message, ribbing the competitors while hammering home the chain's devotion to fresh ingredients.

The fact that Papa John's now is the third-largest pizza chain in terms of sales -- it overtook Little Caesars last year -- points to how competitive the segment is, and will be, among the top three chains, according to Dennis Lombardi, executive vice president of Chicago-based Technomic.

"You're probably going to see all three of them battling it out," he says, "and it's going to be a question of distribution for Papa John's. And then, where Papa John's has a market presence, which is growing every year, we're really going to see it come down to products."

Lombardi isn't convinced that delivery service is enough to make Domino's stand out in the crowd.

"Delivery in and of itself isn't easy to protect as a niche," he says. But he's certain that traditional takeout pizza will be challenged in the coming year by take-and-bake concepts.

"What's interesting about take-and-bake is the extent that it provides a high-quality product, and this may be more in the line of a California Pizza Kitchen product," Lombardi says. "It really provides a slightly different product line than Pizza Hut, Papa John's and Little Caesars."

The element of convenience will be a major factor in helping to make the concept more popular among consumers, he says.

"Even though you're going to go pick up the pizza and bake the pizza yourself, you do have the time control over when the pizza is ready to be consumed," Lombardi explains.

This particularly is important when a household is entertaining guests.

"You don't have the inconvenience of going out and getting a pizza at the time when you're entertaining or the inconvenience of hoping that the delivery guy is on time," he says.

Even as the top three chains competed with each other in terms of new products, smaller chains added to their menus to broaden their customer bases.

Last October 250-unit Mazzio's debuted a prototype restaurant that seats 138 diners in a casual-dining atmosphere and offers an upgraded menu and full bar. Menu items include new appetizers, salads, handmade pizzas and such specialty pastas as chicken cannelloni.

The concept is far different from that of the standard Mazzio's unit, which sells mostly pizza in a counter-service setting.

As for a far different product relaunch, Hungry Howie's Pizza, a 430-unit chain, might have had the most unusual with its Coney Island Pizza. The pizza, which first debuted in 1998, contains chili, sliced hot dogs, cheddar cheese, mustard and onions. Hungry Howie's offered it last year for a limited time.

Other small chains found ways to tweak the menu with side orders. One-hundred-fifteen-unit Pizza Outlet introduced a special blend of garlic dipping sauce, which the chain marketed under its fresh-ingredients positioning.

While other chains were focusing on product innovations, Chuck E. Cheese's was devoting its activity to fun and games. Having gone through two remodeling phases in previous years that upgraded games and play and merchandising areas, the chain recently began adding a Toddler's Zone at its units.