• The Wall Street Journal, Tuesday, November 13, 2007 12:17 PM

Papa John's is rolling out a service that lets customers order pizza pies via text message. Customers first create an account online where they save as many as four different "favorite" orders. Once that's complete, they can send a text message at any time using the shorthand "FAV1," "FAV2," "FAV3" or "FAV4."

A big part of Papa John's motivation is marketing. The company hopes that text-message ordering will provide a new channel to hit customers with such things as coupons and updates on new menu items. Another catch for consumers: As with all text-message services, standard text-messaging fees apply.

The marketing battle among national pizza chains has heated up as growth in the category slowed to only 2.9% last year, according to Technomic. Pizza Hut had 18% of the market, while Domino's had 11% and Papa John's had 6.9%. All three chains now allow some form of ordering through their Web sites, and that part of the business is growing faster than any other.

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