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CUSTOMER STORY

Better Data. Better Pizza.

Papa Johns satisfies customers’ cravings for an exceptional digital experience.

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It’s Friday night. After a long week, you’re envisioning piping-hot pizza, crowned with your favorite toppings. Your cravings don’t like to be kept waiting, and you need that pizza on your doorstep … fast.

You’re not alone — and that’s where Papa Johns comes in. On an average Friday night, the world’s third-largest pizza delivery company satisfies cravings for thousands of customers every minute. The interwoven technology and logistics to get you the pizza you want, when you want it makes for a complex recipe. But with the visibility that Splunk Cloud Platform provides, Papa Johns has a clear view into the ingredients for success.

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1984: The first Papa Johns pizza is made in a broom closet

1984:

The first Papa Johns pizza
is made in a broom closet

2001: Papa Johns launches online ordering

2001:

Papa Johns launches
online ordering

2012: 40% digital sales and 3,000+ stores

2012:

40% digital sales and
3,000+ stores

2022: 90% digital sales and 5,500+ stores across 50 countries and territories

2022:

90% digital sales and
5,500+ stores across 50
countries and territories

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Turning up the temp: From 40% to 90% digital

The first place you reach for when you want a pizza usually isn’t your keys — it’s your phone.

“Papa Johns is all about delivering better pizza,” says Chief Insights and Technology Officer Justin Falciola for Papa John’s International, Inc. “But you can't be in any retail business today without being a technology-focused company."

Cue Papa Johns’ digital sales, which now account for nearly 90% of its multibillion-dollar business — up from 40% just a decade ago. This transformation means that technology is threaded through every aspect of Papa Johns’ operations, from the supply chain and back office to its more than 5,500 stores and all e-commerce and partner channels. This hybrid environment presents a wealth of efficiencies and new customer touchpoints — but also creates more opportunity for things to go wrong, especially when all these systems must work together seamlessly to get customers their pizza, sides and desserts.

To keep all its operations running smoothly, Papa Johns needs visibility into each piece of the pie. “Splunk’s sophisticated platform helps us measure the heartbeat of our system, connecting the dots between the millions of transactions going through our entire ecosystem,” says Sarika Attal, VP of enterprise architecture and technology services. “The end-to-end visibility into our environment via Splunk is crucial in our complex hybrid world.”

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Delivering when every moment matters

When you have that first bite of Papa Johns pizza, everything works together — from the crisp crunch of crust to the zesty zing of vine-ripened tomatoes. Compromising on quality for even one ingredient would ruin the entire finished product.

Papa Johns’ underlying technology is no different. With the Splunk platform, Papa Johns bakes security and resilience into every process, system and architecture so that everything works together to deliver a satisfying customer experience. “Empowering our technologists with strategic tools like Splunk Cloud Platform and Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring means they're not looking for a needle in a haystack,” Falciola says. “They're delivering on our business objectives — and ensuring security, performance and resilience.”

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“Attacks have been changing dynamically — and Splunk has helped us quickly react and tune our preventive controls.”

Justin Falciola
Chief Insights and Technology Officer
Papa Johns

Justin Falciola
Chief Insights and Technology Officer
Papa Johns

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On the security side, Papa Johns must safeguard systems and protect data for all of its more than 26 million Papa Rewards members. With the Splunk platform, teams have centralized insights and the ability to reuse the same data set for multiple purposes across security and operations. “Attacks have been changing dynamically — and Splunk has helped us quickly react and tune our preventive controls,” Falciola says.

On the performance side, customers expect blistering speed — just a few seconds of latency can mean a customer abandons and orders elsewhere. “We’re in the ‘moment business,’” says Yasaswi Pulavarti, VP of digital engineering and services. “When customers order, they need speed at that moment. We’re constantly releasing new features, but resilience is at the center of it all so that our systems are always available to our customers and restaurants.”

While this pace of innovation and scale of operations could create vulnerabilities in Papa Johns’ systems, the Splunk platform helps the team find and fix issues fast. “It used to take us days to find out about issues with a new release. Now with our custom dashboard built with Splunk Dashboard Studio, we can pinpoint and fix a problem on the same day so that customers can place orders seamlessly,” says Willie James, director of resiliency services at Papa Johns. “The Splunk platform is instrumental in our ability to innovate because it gives us more confidence to release things faster.”

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Visibility from the store to your door

Whether you’re craving pizza for date night or football Sunday, you have some expectations. You want the ordering to be convenient, the pizza delicious, and the delivery quick.

This personal expectation becomes an extra-large challenge when scaled over millions of orders that require hands-on pizzamaking. To succeed, Papa Johns needs to be able to comprehensively monitor every store — a capability the team didn’t have prior to Splunk.

Splunk Cloud Platform and Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring are now the backbone for store operations, giving the team “visibility into over 3,200 locations across North America,” says Bill Kirby, senior reliability engineer for Papa Johns. “With the Splunk platform, instead of just knowing when there's a problem because the store contacted the help desk, we see problems before the store even knows so we can fix them before customers are affected.”

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“At the end of the day, customers expect a delicious pizza delivered in a short timeframe with a smile. Our technology, powered by Splunk, helps us do that.”

Justin Falciola Chief Insights and Technology Officer, Papa Johns

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Having eyes into store operations helps Papa Johns keep up with increased customer demand while empowering vital field operations and delivering on their core value “innovate to win.” “With Splunk’s observability and AIOps capabilities, we have information at our fingertips so we can react and innovate faster on behalf of our restaurants,” Pulavarti says.

Since teams can now see across data sets, they’re proactively identifying major issues — such as getting locked out of a system — before the store reopens the next day. Once pizzas are loaded into delivery vehicles, the Splunk platform then helps Papa Johns identify and act on opportunities to improve deliverability, dispatching and routing so pizzas arrive fresh in as little time as possible.

“At the end of the day, customers expect a delicious pizza delivered in a short timeframe with a smile," Falciola says. "Our technology, powered by the Splunk platform, helps us do that.”

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