Domino’s will let customers get any pizza for $9.99. | Photo courtesy of Domino’s.
Pizza chains right now are apparently banking on the $9.99 price point.
Earlier this week, Domino’s brought back its “Best Deal Ever,” a $9.99, any-pizza offer when customers order them online.
Customers can get any kind of crust or combination of toppings. Domino’s Chief Marketing Officer Kate Trumbull said in a statement that there are 34 million potential combinations of one of the chain’s pizzas, effectively making this a discount on 34 million products, at least through Aug. 3.
Meanwhile, on Tuesday the Detroit-based Little Caesars announced a “More for $9.99” menu, allowing customers to choose from a selection of bundled value offers.
Customers can get two large classic pizzas, a “Party Pack” of the chain’s Crazy Puffs, a large classic pizza and four Crazy Puffs or a Pretzel Crust Pizza with a side of Crazy Bread and Crazy Sauce.
“As the value leader in pizza, we don’t follow trends, we sell them,” Little Caesars Chief Marketing Officer Greg Hamilton said in a statement.
The offers come two weeks after Pizza Hut introduced a line of premium Hut Lover’s Pizzas, each priced at $12.99.
The deals intensify a tradition of value marketing in the pizza business.
Traditional pizza chains have long competed on price, because consumers generally have little brand loyalty. That eased before and during the pandemic, as brands focused either on ease of ordering or more premium items.
But sales and traffic challenges more recently have resurrected the need for more value-based marketing.
Little Caesars is offering a $9.99 menu. | Image courtesy of Little Caesars.
Domino’s, Pizza Hut and Papa Johns, the three publicly traded pizza chains, have each struggled with largely stagnant same-store sales for the past three years. Since the first quarter of 2022, the chains collectively have averaged a 0.19% same-store sales decline. Of the three, only Domino’s averaged a positive number, 1.22%.
It’s not just those three. The entire quick-service pizza sector grew by just 0.93% in 2023. It could have been worse: Fast-casual pizza chain sales declined 5%.
Those sales challenges are rooted in issues unique to pizza chains, compounded by an overall restaurant economy.
Many of these pizza chains were historically able to rely on their delivery operations for sales. But the rapid growth of third-party delivery has siphoned off much of that business, leaving the pizza players to both join aggregators and find new ways to convince customers to buy their items.
Chains are now pushing aggressively into their carryout operations, which is historically Little Caesars’ turf. Meanwhile, customers can get pizzas from convenience stores like Casey’s—one of the largest pizza providers in the country—as well as the warehouse club Costco.
Post-pandemic inflation, meanwhile, has damaged low-income consumers’ buying power, which has forced a broad value push throughout the quick-service business. And so pizza chains are now pushing value more than ever.
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