Papa Johns Can Predict When Your Fridge Is Empty

https://www.adexchanger.com/tv/papa-johns-can-predict-when-your-fridge-is-empty/

by WaitWaitWha • 21 days ago

50 59 21 days ago

Cshaya• 21 days ago

idea is to reach hungry consumers by “knowing what is in their fridge without being too creepy,” lol I think they forgot to realize this is incredibly unsettling and creepy

hx8• 17 days ago

It's just good utilization of marketing budget.

cwmoore3• 17 days ago

sed -E “s/good\s//g”

autoexec10• 17 days ago

Companies have been targeting people with ads when they think they're the most vulnerable for ages. What's bold about this is how not at all subtle it is. "We know there's no food in your fridge. Order a pizza!" seems like something that should make people uncomfortable.

al_borland3• 21 days ago

I find everything about this upsetting. This level of targeted manipulation should be illegal.

It seems like the only way to avoid it is to only shop in person and to stick to mom and pop stores that can’t afford to do all these shenanigans, while also avoiding ads like the plague.

AndrewKemendo2• 21 days ago

Isn’t that the default though?

Maybe I’m rare in that what you describe is literally how I’ve always done it, but are there more people getting groceries delivered than shopping in store now?

Stores seem plenty full to me.

al_borland3• 21 days ago

Even in person at major chains with deep pockets, they can track habits and employ tactics to manipulate behavior.

There has been talking (maybe tests as well) of using facial recognition to manipulate digital price tags on shelves based on the buyer. Several states are already working to pass legislation to block this.

There was that widely published issue years ago of Target starting to advertise pregnancy related items to a teenage girl before her parents even found out she was pregnant. They now actively try to avoid being too targeted, to avoid the creep factor.

They’ve had video monitors at self-checkout in many stores for years now. While I heard at some stores they were just a scare tactic and not hooked up to anything, it’s not beyond the capabilities to use facial recognition at checkout to link a person to their purchases. That’s easier today that it’s ever been.

When ApplePay was rolling out, stores like Walmart were trying to push their own standard called CurrentC, blocking ApplePay. It was a QR code based payment system that would allow them to better track your purchases. ApplePay was a problem, since it generates a random number each time.

Amazon had those stores without registers that tracked uses around the store and what they grabbed. I’m sure that, and now Whole Foods purchases, are used to influence what is pushed on Amazon. That’s not too far fetched.

Almost every store these days has loyalty cards to scan, or ask you to put in your phone number. These are used to track what you buy and tie to you.

Lots of avenues, even in person, to collect and use data.

The key distinction I was making was mom and pop stores. I don’t think those are doing it, unless they are getting bought up by private equity and getting new systems deployed, which I suppose is possible. But the big chains where most people shop are absolutely doing this kind of thing, or trying hard to figure it out.

gdulli• 21 days ago

Every fridge between mine and the nearest Papa Johns would need to be empty before I'd consider eating there.

subygan• 17 days ago

Is this a submarine article[1] by instacart to sell their consumers data? feels like a glowing review of the data. And why would papa jhons accept to be a part of this campaign?

[1] https://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

autoexec10• 17 days ago

This is absolutely an ad and you can bet Papa Johns signed off on it. Their Chief Marketing Officer provided quotes. Adexchanger is a site about ads owned by an ad company (Access Intelligence, LLC).

If this ad campaign backfires on them it won't be the first time. They were sued for illegally spamming 500,000 people over text with ads. (https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/11/papa-johns-faces...). Although ultimately, they got away with paying out just 11 million in cash and a whole lot of coupons for their pizza to a tiny fraction of the people they spammed so maybe it was worth it to them in the end.

morkalork2• 17 days ago

Instacart users should be upset about their data being packaged up and sold. Or maybe there should be half-decent privacy laws that protect them. Otherwise you just get this corporate-orwellianism.

Anyways, I wonder if instacart can predict political affiliation. I bet their data scientists have at least tried.

Grombobulous• 17 days ago

Half decent data privacy laws are wildly overdue.

My other thought is that companies like Papa John’s that make shitty products are most likely to engage in desperate growth tactics like this.

You know what helps tempt people into ordering pizza? Making good pizza.

The problem is that it’s cheaper to purchase analytics and serve an ad for “pizza” at the literal moment the viewer is out of groceries.

I wonder if their fancy analytics can also tell them how many of these customers regret not just buying groceries after they finish their Papa John’s.

autoexec10• 17 days ago

Instacart users should be upset about their data being packaged up and sold.

Instacart users should have been upset about that while reading Instacart's privacy policy prior to signing up and refused to use the service in the first place. Having their data being packaged up and sold was something every user already agreed to.

morkalork2• 17 days ago

I believe we're at the point where living in modern society and dodging these abusive EULAs is nigh impossible.

Your credit card company, every merchant you interact with, even your employer's payroll processor all sell your data.

I guess if you work under the table cash-only jobs, only purchase items in-person, again cash only, and don't use any apps on your phone you are safe from corporate snooping?

LocalH3• 17 days ago

People will quite literally sell their first-born for convenience.

dzonga• 17 days ago

it's under terms and conditions.

Instacart is now an ad-company. so as almost every company now.

ads are just too lucrative to pass up on if you sit on some rich data.

autoexec10• 17 days ago

There are two things Papa Johns doesn’t like to see

There are three things. Papa Johns also hates to see well compensated employees. They've been successfully sued several times for wage theft, they were forced to stop their “no-poach” policies which prevented franchise owners from hiring workers at other Papa Johns restaurants in an effort to keep wages down, and they insisted that if they had to provide health insurance to their workers they'd pass that cost onto consumers rather than spend a penny of the $87 million in gross profit they were making.

tailscaler2026• 17 days ago

Their founder really doesn't like black people either. Do not support Papa Johns. Plenty of other choices for shit pizza.

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-44803163

galleywest200• 17 days ago

Unless it is the ones in Atlanta because I believe Shaq owns those.

charcircuit3• 17 days ago

Your source does not back up your claim. The founder said he didn't use the slur.

autoexec10• 17 days ago

Even though their founder and CEO was casually throwing out the slur on a call he had with his marketing agency about the PR fallout of his previous comments complaining about NFL players exercising their right to protest police brutality during the national anthem, the official position of Papa Johns is that they condemn racism in all forms and they want to distance themselves from the endorsements and praise the restaurant has received from white supremacists both before and after the slur came to light.

cwmoore3• 17 days ago

Lower wages mean more jobs though, right?

BTW, why don’t we tax the bots for UBI?

kitchi• 17 days ago

I'm not sure how lower wages == more jobs.

The assumption with that statement is that there is a net amount of money to be dispensed, and either a few highly compensated employees get those jobs or many low wage employees.

But the very fact of wage theft indicates that the employers want to keep more money in their hands, and distribute less of it. So it really just amounts to small numbers of underpaid jobs.

cramer4next• 17 days ago

I love Papa Johns and we get their pizza atleast twice a week. Never once did we have have a bad pizza or bad service. All the people i've meet there while picking up are happy and very customer service orientated.

Whatever their formula is, it's working.

autoexec10• 17 days ago

Whatever their formula is, it's working.

It's certainly working on you

tomjakubowski• 16 days ago

rather than spend a penny of the $87 million in gross profit they were making.

PJ's gross profits are much higher than this, in the hundreds of millions, usually over $500M. $87 million is approximately their net income for 2024 ($83.49M, down to $30.5M in 2025).

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/PZZA/papa-johns/gr...

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/PZZA/papa-johns/ne...

frereubu2• 17 days ago

The idea is to reach hungry consumers by “knowing what is in their fridge without being too creepy,” said Carrie Drinkwater, chief investment officer at Carat.

What she means is that they want to do it subtly enough so people aren't creeped out, because when it's put like that it really is creepy.

frereubu2• 17 days ago

This has been in the pipeline for a while now. This is an NYT article from 2012 talking about how Target were, well, targeting women they thought were pregnant based on their shopping habits because that's one of the few points in life when people's shopping habits are maleable: https://archive.is/CUo8O

conartist6• 17 days ago

I'm just... Confused at how any of this is good for society. YOU FUCKING KNOW when your fridge is empty.

So OK maybe some corp can reprogram you to not restock on food. CONVINCE ME THAT'S GOOD. Is it not just an attempt to make people worse? Less self-sufficient? More miserable?

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF2• 17 days ago

Trying to teach people to garden.

nitwit005• 17 days ago

Papa Johns’ “Empty Fridge” campaign ran from late April through last weekend on NBCU streaming supply such as Peacock, NBC Sports and NBCU content across streaming distributors. While it’s too soon to digest the results, Papa Johns knows what it’s looking for.

They have data for a full month. They know if it worked or not. They decided to make a positive press release despite it failing to increase sales.

alexpotato• 17 days ago

Atul Gawande, of Checkslist Manifesto [0] fame, has a great article about the Cheesecake Factory [1].

He mentions that that they have a model that can predict both guest numbers and revenue:

“We have forecasting models based on historical data—the trend of the past six weeks and also the trend of the previous year,” Gordon told me. “The predictability of the business has become astounding.” The company has even learned how to make adjustments for the weather or for scheduled events like playoff games that keep people at home."

And this was in 2012!

I highly recommend both the book and the article as both talk, in detail, about how to build systems even in very dynamic environments.

I can only imagine how accurate the models have gotten now.

0 - https://amzn.to/4y4Riot

1 - https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/08/13/big-med

weare138• 17 days ago

That's alot of time, cost and effort just to avoid making better pizza.

solarkraft• 17 days ago

Alternative framing:

Instacart sells data to Papa Johns for better pizza ad timing.

Papa Johns isn’t somehow able to predict this based on their own data (which is the impression I initially got from the headline), they are buying it from Instacart.

Name and shame.

yieldcrv• 17 days ago

correct: how to be creepy without being invasive

Papa Johns Can Predict When Your Fridge Is Empty

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