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Papa John's provides ingredients transparency across digital channels

Papa John's announced a facelift to its digital and social channels by sharing new ingredient statements, definitions and details.

May 22, 2015

Papa John's announced a facelift to its digital and social channels by sharing new ingredient statements, definitions and details, according to a company press release. The revamped digital channels provide consumers with a background on ingredients by clicking www.papajohns.com/better.

"I believe that Papa John's has one of the 'cleanest' pizza ingredient labels in the QSR pizza industry," said John Schantter, founder and chief executive officer of Papa John's, in a statement. "Before I even opened my first Papa John's, back when I was making pizzas at Rocky's Sub Pub in Jeffersonville, Indiana, I learned that quality mattered. Fast-forward to today, and that lesson still stands."

Papa John's continues to look closely at its labels to ensure it is conscious of food trends, the company said. The company eliminated trans-fats, MSG, fillers in its meat toppings, BHA, BHT and partially hydrogenated oils, according to the statement.

The company is enhancing its social content with a series of Instagram and Vine videos, and Twitter and Facebook content focusing on each ingredient category. The content will allow consumers to take an in-depth look at what goes into each ingredient.

The content, distributed across social channels the next few weeks, also will highlight its core ingredients one-by-one—from its original dough to its mozzarella cheese.

"Our industry is changing and consumers are demanding transparency—and as a leader in an industry in which some of our competitors don't publicly list their ingredients, we want to give that information to our customers," said Bob Kraut, Papa John's chief marketing officer. "We want our customers to believe what we believe: that we have better ingredients. And what better place to share that belief than on the social channels that our customers use on a daily basis?

"Nutritional information has long been accessible on our site, but we wanted to make things easier for consumers to locate and understand exactly what they're eating and what makes our pizzas so special. And, when paired with our new social content highlighting our hero ingredients, now they can."

In a separate announcement, INVESTKentucky an organization formed to facilitate local investment conferences that bring together senior management of Kentucky public companies with the regional and national investment community, selected Papa John's as one of the finalists for the Kentucky Public Company of the Year Award (#BestKYCompanies).

The firm will present one of five finalists, including Humana, Texas Roadhouse and Tempur Sealy International, and Lexmark Inc. (who declined to participate), the award at the INVESTKentucky Equity Conference June 5 at Churchill Downs.  

The CFA Society of Louisville, a nonprofit member organization of financial analysts, portfolio managers, and other investment professionals, and the Louisville chapter of Financial Executives International, comprised of senior financial executives at public and private companies determined the finalists.

Methodology included a set of weighted quantitative metrics to evaluate company performance over a two-year period, examining both accounting and market performance measures. Additionally, each finalist was asked to submit information about strategy, philanthropy and employment, in the event of a tie, the press release said.