News

CiCi's overhauls pizza recipe after crowdsourcing effort

November 5, 2014

CiCi's Pizza has introduced new recipes to its menu at its nearly 500 restaurants nationwide. According to a company release, the new recipes include better ingredients such as 100-percent real cheese, more meat toppings (including 18 more pepperoni slices per pizza) and garlic-buttered crust.

The chain has been developing and testing pizza upgrades to its buffet since earlier this year as part of an overall quality initiative.

CiCi's also has increased the size of buffet and To Go pizzas to 14 inches.

"Everything we're doing is about improving our relationship with our guests, and their relationship with our food," CEO Darin Harris said in the release. "This is just the beginning of our work to improve our food, and our guests will continue to see changes as we pursue our goal to offer 'Remarkable Products.'"

CiCi's asked guests to interact on social media using the hashtag #PizzaMyMind to share their ideas on what menu changes they wanted leading up to the Nov. 3 launch. CiCi's will now begin a new social media campaign using #BetterBelieveIt to continue to get feedback on the changes and additional suggestions from the guest perspective.

The company's new ads, created by full-service digital agency BLITZ, also focus on customer input on changes at CiCi's. The campaign, titled "Better. Believe It.," features a CiCi's manager noticing guests searching for the cheesiest slice of pizza or not eating their crusts to highlight how the company crowdsourced its fans to make changes.  The English- and Spanish-language ads break today on national cable, including Hispanic networks.

"CiCi's is really tapping in to who our guests are and what they want, and this campaign is a reflection of that," CMO Sarah McAloon said in the release. "We want to become a guest favorite, so it's important that we reach out and give guests an opportunity to voice their opinions as we continue to make changes at CiCi's."