Making A Case for Take-And-Bake

Pizza is big business among American consumers, with companies like Papa Murphy's reaping the benefits of feeding the take-and-bake trend.

July 30, 2010

NEW YORK - Americans eat 100 acres of pizza each day, or about 350 slices per second, according to the National Association of Pizza Operators. Pizza also accounts for more than 10 percent of all foodservice sales, according to Food Industry News.

Pizza is big business, and while the big guns ?" Papa John??s, Domino??s and Pizza Hut ?" battle it out in the pizza delivery arena, the take-and-bake pizza business is a growing foodservice trend worth keeping an eye on. (Read more on take-and-bake pizza in the current issue of NACS Magazine.)

Marketing Daily reports that Papa Murphy's Take-'N'-Bake Pizza chain "seems to be offering the right formula at the right time: convenient yet fresh and reasonably priced meal solutions." The Vancouver, Washington-based business creates the pizza, yet allows customers to take it home fresh and bake it themselves. Overhead is low, which makes it appealing to franchisees, because the business doesn??t require the use of ovens, freezers or delivery vehicles/drivers.

Meanwhile, convenience retailers have also caught on to the potential sales impact of offering take-and-bake pizza. As reported in the July issue of NACS Magazine, some convenience operators with already-established pizza programs have expanded the category to include take-and-bake.

In fact, many of Kwik Trip stores in the Midwest "compete head-to-head" with Papa Murphy??s. "They make the pizza fresh right in front of you...they??re very good at it," Paul Servais, foodservice zone leader at Kwik Trip, said about Papa Murphy??s. Even with the stiff competition, Kwik Trip sells 70 take-and-bake pies on average per week, per store.

Besides good pizza, one of the ingredients to Papa Murphy??s success is its community-based marketing. Marketing Daily notes that the chain "relies heavily on print coupons/promotions delivered through mass-mailer coupon distribution programs," according to Evan Evans, the company??s vice president of field marketing and corporate communications.

Papa Murphy??s encourages its franchisees to participate in local TV ads that tout the company??s value proposition: "value, quality and freshness." Evans commented that the company provides is 500-plus franchisees with "a library of promotional concepts/materials and training that enable them to create promotional partnerships with local, non-competitive businesses," such as the local dry cleaner, local dentist or hardware store.

"We are not a stand-alone destination ?" our locations are about 1,200 square feet, on average, and typically located within strip malls," Evans told the news source, adding, "But as mom-and-pop operations, we can take marketing to a much more personal level than a typical pizza chain or QSR. That personal touch takes us out of the 'chain' equation in consumers' minds, making us part of the community."

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