Article

Why measuring social media is key to growing fast casual pizza brands

Pizza brands should turn to social intelligence to examine their brand reputation and operational performance by location.

August 26, 2013

By Kristin Muhlner, newBrandAnalytics

No matter how you choose to enjoy your pizza, whether crust first or folded, pizza places are raking in the dough across U.S. market segments. Growth is on the rise for top national pizza chains like Domino's and Papa John's, as well as for fast casual "assembly line" pizza concept chains and neighborhood pizza parlors. Although costly advertising campaigns might explain some of the growth in the top tier, it doesn't readily explain why pizza places you've probably never heard of also experienced a sizable sales increase as a sector last year.

A theory for the pizza craze is that it's one meal that satisfies a lot of requirements for groups of people — it's fast, tasty, inexpensive and easily eaten on the premises, or delivered to your house. According to Technomic's Generational Consumer Trend Report, baby boomers prefer to dine in, while younger generations (early 30s and 20s) prefer takeout or delivery. And because pizza is the comfort food synonymous with all these options already, it stays top of mind no matter the consumer segment.

Another reason pizza joints — like Mediterranean fare — are such crowd pleasers is that they can disguise themselves as a healthy food option. So although a traditional pizza menu is really just variations of the same dish plus your typical salad choices, it gets high marks from customers in the menu selection category. Drilling down even further into the comparative themes of the more than 10 pizza concepts analyzed by newBrandAnalytics, healthy food trends include "vegan pizza," "veggie toppings," "wheat crust," and "gluten free pizza." But overwhelmingly, it's the classic pizza elements mentioned with the most volume in social media, such as "pepperoni," "cheese," "sauce" and "breadstick."

This renewed emphasis of using fresh ingredients to make custom pizzas while you wait contributes to pizza being the next big trend in fast-growing fast casual concepts. So just like Chipotle surfed the burrito boom, concepts like Pie Five, PizzaRev, TopThat! Pizza, Uncle Maddio's and Blaze Pizza hope to be the leaders in the make-your-own pizza chain explosion.

Trending on social

Analyzing social intelligence for a fast casual establishment like Blaze Pizza and many others reveals that the massive amounts of in-store commentary being primarily tweeted and posted is during the five minutes it takes a pie to bake. Operational categories raking in the most comments from pizza fast casual customers are "speed of service," "friendliness," "food quality" and "portion size." Customers are more concerned with chains getting these issues right at their locations than they are with overall pricing and value.

The top sources of social feedback continue to be from Yelp, Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare for the majority of fast casual concepts. NewBrandAnalytics analyzes the demographic attributes of a large portion of online reviewers, including the author's age, gender, and sphere of social influence, and the data confirms that Millennials are the poster children for these types of "make it in front of me" concepts.

Why everyone is doing pizza

Upscale casual dining places that want to steal dollars from competitors have started introducing flatbreads to their menu. And while it's wise to capitalize on trends, all chains must examine the real-time customer feedback provided via social commentary to be able to gauge the immediate failure or success of such a radical operational change. Because if a review site user community, like the Yelp Elite, gets the impression that your new pizza offering isn't tasty, or that your take-out orders are often wrong, the gamble will backfire. Be sure to note whether your current social intelligence tool has a delivery and to-go operational subcategory, because the insight groupings (speed of service, accuracy, etc.) can be quite different for the takeout experience than dining-in.

The source of the online commentary for the majority of pizza chains is determined by the dining experience — most delivery-only chains have high-volume Twitter data, whereas local pizza hangouts are mentioned more on review sites. It's not surprising, then, that the most positive themes for big brand pizza retailers is the company name, or a reference to a promotion, while neighborhood shops rank better for positive service themes and named servers.

Corporate and franchisee teams for pizza brands should turn to social intelligence to examine their brand reputation and operational performance by location. More advanced execs, or 'super users,' should also take advantage of their competitors' customer data so not to miss an opportunity to improve and steal market share. Goliath pizza chains like Pizza Hut and Little Caesars should also remember to include a few local parlors in their competitive analysis to familiarize themselves with boutique trends, like this popular trend seen across several delivery and dine-in pizza joints — fusing entrée flavors into pizza toppings, for example, BBQ Chicken Pizza, Cheese Burger Pizza and Eggs & Ham Pizza.

In this food theme cloud example, you see the majority of customer sentiment is positive except for a few negative insights gathered about their calzone, salad and crust.Users can also read the verbatim review to understand exactly what their customers didn't love — this knowledge gives culinary staffers a chance to remedy issues, and those actions give marketers a chance to invite that guest back for a second trial.

As a business owner, anything you can do with social data to increase your customers' intent to return is smart, no matter how you slice it.

Kristin Muhlner is CEO of newBrandAnalytics, a social intelligence firm serving food and beverage, hospitality, and retail organizations.