Pizza Hut’s Customers helping Brew up Success

Grocerant niche mix and meal bundling continues to drive customer adoption and Pizza Hut is seeing first hand just how it works according to Grocerant Guru® Steven Johnson of Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®

Regular readers of this blog know all of Yum brands concepts are ‘looking for that elusive new electricity to drive incremental sales and profits.  In the case of Pizza Hut one of the new points of electricity just might be its beer delivery test in Phoenix, Pizza Hut said it is expanding the program to 100 locations in Arizona and California.

Pizza is now offering delivery of two packs and six packs of beer, ranging in price from between $3 and $4.50 for two packs and $5.99 and $10.99 for six packs. Six beer options are available: Budweiser, Bud Light, Blue Moon, Coors Light, Miller High Life and Shock Top.

Starting this month, Pizza Huts beer delivery has also been added at more Arizona locations including restaurants in Tucson, Glendale, Prescott, and Winslow. Pizza Hut’s California, beer delivery is now available at participating restaurants in Los Angeles, Bakersfield, Fresno, Riverside, Sacramento, Santa Barbara and Santa Clara, the company said. In Southern California, restaurants in Anaheim, Huntington Beach and Redding will be adding beer delivery later this month.

Pizza Hut said free delivery will be offered in some Arizona markets when customers purchase select six-packs of beer.  Increasing consumer check average is often a risky thing to do how Johnson believes that in this case delivery of beer is seen as a extra value added service and he believes that will not derail this program.

Pizza Hut has indicated that it intends to expand the beer delivery program quickly in 2018.  Roughly 1,700 of Pizza Hut’s nearly 7,500 domestic locations already have liquor licenses. Pizza Hut operates over 16,700 restaurants in more than 100 countries. According to Johnson, “Brand relevance is in part driven with innovation in new food products in combination with new avenues of distribution all of which are the platform for the new electricity.”

Johnson stated “that in my minds-eye the new electricity must be very efficient for the supply and includes such things as fresh foods, urban clothing, grocerant consultants, urban farming (produce, seafood, etc.), autonomous delivery, cashier-less retail, cash-less payments, digital hand held marketing. This program has all of that.

Foodservice retailers to survive the next generation of retail must embrace the artificial intelligence revolution while simultaneously embracing fresh food that is portable, fresh, with differentiation that is familiar not different.  That will require brands to embrace new fresh food partnerships more now than ever before according to Johnson.

Are you looking for a new partnership to drive sales? Are you ready for some fresh ideations? Do your food marketing tactics look more like yesterday that tomorrow?  Visit www.FoodserviceSolutions.us for more information or contact: Steve@FoodserviceSolutions.us Remember success does leave clues and we just may have the clue you need to propel your continued success.