GorillaOffTopic, Everything But Gorilla Trades

Gorillas get awfully hungry, and when they get hungry they sometimes order pizza. There is nothing like hot, cheesy pizzas to make a guy (or gorilla) feel all warm and cozy on a nice evening at home. Like many of you, when the Gorilla decides to order a pizza, he usually chooses Papa Johns. Something about the freshness of that hearty sauce and the melt in your mouth taste of their homemade crust just sets the night right!  Apparently, many of you feel the same as the Gorilla, with Americans all over the United States having ordered a ton of the delicious stuff last year, proving that Papa is capable of rolling out the dough and raking it in as well. Unbelievably, a huge part of the success in the Louisville-based company is in its online ordering. In the last 7 years, the pizza giant has made over $1 billion (yes, that’s a “b”) in online orders alone.  Papa John is now the 3rd largest pizza chain in the U.S., and online sales have been growing at an average of more than 50% per year. In 2001, the chain’s online sales totaled $20.4 million. Last year, its online sales were around $400 million. Mama Mia! Amazingly, when you walk into a Papa John’s location, the phones seem unusually quiet. That is because the orders are coming in like crazy over the Internet!  Jim Ensign, vice president of marketing communications at Papa John’s, says that it took over 7 years to hit the billion dollar mark, but he says that at the current rate, it will only take another 3 years to double that number. That is simply incredible! But the big papa isn’t the only pizza chain to jump into the online ordering craze.  Pizza Hut says that online sales have increased six-fold, and Dominos’ new “Pizza Tracker” tracking system has given the company a “big bump” in sales, says Jenny Fouracre, a spokeswoman for Ann Arbor, Mich.-based Domino’s. Both of these companies also have a text-based ordering system in place for customer orders as well.  Papa Johns says that more than 20% of its business now comes from online and text ordering, and since it was put in place in 2001, the company says it has invested over $15 million in online ordering technology.  The company says that in the future, it will offer even more ways to make ordering easy and convenient for its customers. Now, folks, if you are online as much as the Gorilla, doesn’t it make sense? This is a fantastic concept that has proven to be highly successful, and surprisingly, in a  type of business you would never expect to thrive from online ordering. Keep up the work Big Papa!