Pizza Hut Late for Dinner

 

It’s hard to give credit to a company that has been late to the party for forty years.  When Pizza Hut scoffed at Domino’s Pizza as a non-competition back in the day because they only delivered pizza.  How did that work out for them?  Two years ago Pizza Hut ran an advertisement that they were the first company to sell a pizza online.  That system was not integrated did not work the way consumers wanted.

Then when a working solution came along Pizza Hut refused to enter the On-line ordering game with CyberSlice, then refused cybermeals, and even Food.com while many other national chains moved forward.  Many other pizza chains moved forward.

Papa John’s drove customer relevance, store growth, top line sales and bottom-line profits with online ordering all the while Pizza Hut was still building ‘red roof restaurants.  How did that work out? Just wondering.  

Now on restaurant trade magazine said “Even Pizza Hut is getting into drive-thrus”.  The team at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions® says Pizza Hut has been ‘late for dinner for forty year’s’.

So, last week Pizza Hut said it is adding “The Hut Lane,” a digital order pickup window, in more than 1,500 locations across the country, and has plans to add more.  While the drive-thru is a consumer favorite giving Pizza Hut credit for adding a drive-thru at this stage is like buying Easter Dinner a week after Easter.

Nicolas Burquier, chief customer and operations officer with Pizza Hut, stated, “We are giving our customers a variety of options to optimize their pizza-eating experience as we build on our business momentum,”,  Let me ask you does your marketing look more like yesterday than tomorrow?

If your brand has been capitulating market share to others a series of incremental steps is required to regain customer relevance.  In the case of Pizza Hut, we hope that this is one of the baby steps along the way.  If your brand wants to capture top of mind relevant consumer touchpoints you just might consider looking a customer ahead. 

Are you ready for some fresh ideations? Do your food marketing ideations look more like yesterday than tomorrow? Interested in learning how our Grocerant Guru® can edify your retail food brand while creating a platform for consumer convenient meal participation, differentiation and individualization?  Email us at: Steve@FoodserviceSolutions.us or visit: us on our social media sites by clicking one of the following links: Facebook,  LinkedIn, or Twitter