Papa John's Doesn't Know Its iPhone Apps From Its Elbow

When Papa John's International executive Jim McDonnell expressed disappointment with business results the pizza chain had gotten from its iPhone application at the OMMA Mobile conference this week, his seemed a rare voice of dissent.

Apple, after all, just celebrated the 1 billionth download from its App Store, and the apps themselves -- now more than 35,000 in total -- are usually the subject of gushing enthusiasm. McDonnell, marketing manager, emerging channels, for Papa John's, explained during an OMMA panel Wednesday that the company's iPhone app had not performed as well as mobile display advertising in driving business to its outlets.

But it turns out that when he referred to Papa John's "iPhone app," he actually meant its iPhone-enabled mobile site (mobile.papajohns.com), which includes a store locator and a shortcut to the main ordering menu. Papa John's doesn't offer an app through the App Store. The limitations of the site could be one reason why they have not seen better results from the iPhone.

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Lilly Gold, founder of New York-based Intuwin, which specializes in developing iPhone and other apps, rattled off a number of additional features that Papa John's could offer through an iPhone app such as coupon delivery, information on specials, payment systems and options for ordering "favorites."

"Ordering manually via an iPhone-enabled site is one method -- a very slow one--iPhone users come to expect much more," she said.

Following up on his remarks on the OMMA panel, McDonnell was quoted in ReadWriteWeb Thursday as saying that Papa John's had driven $1 million in revenue from its iPhone-enabled site. Not exactly chump change. But he said the company had no plans to launch an actual iPhone app because the company is still "dipping their toe in the pond."

When Papa John's is ready to plunge into the App Store, Intuwin and other developers will surely be standing by, ready to help.

5 comments about "Papa John's Doesn't Know Its iPhone Apps From Its Elbow".
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  1. Dean Collins from Cognation Inc, May 1, 2009 at 6:29 p.m.

    So what you are really saying is..... iPhone developers dont know 'BizDev from their respective elbows'.

    Here is a company in Papa John with;

    1/ revenue
    2/ real product
    3/ actual justifiable business case

    .... and yet no one has convinced this 'non target audience' CEO what he is missing out on.

    If you are an iPhone developer and think you have what it takes, build the application, install it on 3 jailbroken iPhones (eg so you dont have to get it approved on the iStore), fedex the actual iphones fully charged up with a data plan etc and ask the Papa John ceo/marketing manager/franchise manager to turn them on with your application sitting there on the landing page.

    ..... dont blame the customer for not knowing what you are capable of building, thats your job.

    Cheers,
    Dean Collins
    www.Cognation.net
    P.S. when you use my idea and send these phones and win the business, dont forget to send me an iPhone to say thanks.

  2. Pat Leader from The Baltimore Sun, May 4, 2009 at 9:59 a.m.

    This is an example of the lack of knowledge about new technology for some top executives. This technology is emerging and changing quickly and top down companies may be ill prepared to harness it's power to improve their business.

  3. charlene simmons, May 4, 2009 at 1:59 p.m.

    Google search 466453 works just as well, pizza and zip code= instant results. For that type of spend, I would think they could get something more for their money.

  4. Howard Brodwin from Sports and Social Change, May 4, 2009 at 9:17 p.m.

    Dean, that's a great way to get noticed - love that way of thinking.

    Pat, I agree 100%. It's that same attitude we all heard in the mid-90's, when every company said "we need a website" and had no clue as to what it was or how it could help their business.

  5. Irene L from NA, May 5, 2009 at 4:32 p.m.

    I found this intriguing and had commented on the previous article so I was compelled to read this one.

    For fun, I went to their site from my iPhone and what I found interesting is that it didn't sniff my browser to see that I was on an iPhone - the regular site came up. So I had to scroll down the tiny images to find the link for mobile, then click another link for mobile ordering.

    So then I tried the locator. Punched in my zip and zero results came up. But when I used google maps, two came up in the next zip codes over, just a few blocks in either direction.

    There are tons of mobile sites out there, some good, some not so good. Rather than blaming the medium, blame the execution!

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