Papa John’s and the 10-minute pizza

Pizza may yet become a legitimate fast lunch food (outside of urban areas that are blessed with an abundance of restaurants that sell it by the slice any time, day or night, of course). Out here in the rest of the world, many of us working stiffs have to suffer through a buffet if we want noontime pizza. Sometimes if we want something specific we even wait (Gasp!) as long as 30 minutes to get our customized pie.

Papa John’s tends to change all that with their Papa's 10 Minute Carry-out Customer Guarantee. During lunchtime, they guarantee a custom made pizza will be ready for pickup in 10 minutes, or it’s free. How can they do it, you ask? Is this some kind of dark magic, luring us in with the quickie-yet-made-to-order pizza with the ultimate purpose of stealing our souls?

Maybe, but at this point they claim instead that they’re using a new breed of oven that cuts down the cook time to 4 minutes. Over the next two years, Papa John's will spend $20 million to roll out 1,500 ovens with higher air velocity and higher-speed burners in about 750 stores. In test markets, they’ve missed the 10-minute target approximately 1% of the time. The company hopes that this incredible pizza velocity will help them compete with fast food restaurants. Assuming that your local restaurant is one of the 750 upgraded to the new ovens, will you put them on your mental lunchtime options list?

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