Enhancing the customer, and employee, experience

Lee Reed (main picture), who has recently joined Papa Johns as its senior director operations, shares with us some of the current thinking and team-focused approach and aspirations for their growing UK pizza business.

Background

Lee Reed has recently joined Papa Johns from KFC with the aim of driving further operational excellence and franchisee profitability as the company continues to grow. He is now responsible for central and field operations, franchisee team management as well as overseeing customer service teams and field training capability, and is fully focused on enhancing the end-to-end customer experience.

Prior to joining Papa Johns, Lee worked at KFC for nine years in various senior roles, most recently as director of franchise operations. Before that, he was a commercial manager at Marks & Spencer, originally joining the organisation four years prior on a graduate scheme.

There are macro challenges facing the QSR industry – how is Papa Johns staying focused and what company plans can you share?

By finding the balance and blend between focusing on the short-term pressures of the ongoing inflation, which is ongoing whilst also easing, and the staffing and labour shortages the whole country is experiencing, and the ability of our talent. The thing for us is how do we elevate our approach to attracting talent, but equally how do we retain the great talent we already have in the business too? Inflationary-wise, the supply team here and internationally are working hard across everything, and we’ve already seen some positive reductions in our key menu items, cheese being one of them – something we’re now hoping to share with our franchisees.

In terms of the here and now, our customers are of course important, but at the same time with having a number of important additions to the leadership team, we are focusing on long term, sustainable growth across our estate, and something we are about to share with our franchise owners and operators too in terms of our strategy on how we can partner together and elevate the brand from a people perspective - improving our partner capability, and enabling our franchisees to grow at a more rapid pace. Equally, we are thinking about how do we help our teams perform better, and how do we deliver a better performance and customer experience to improve the commercial viability of the brand longer term.

How do you work with your franchise network to help them develop their businesses?

We have a team of franchise business managers who are like the partnership account managers of old, and who actively spend time reviewing the business performance of franchisees, visiting their sites, supporting them on the development of people and advising them in terms of technology and its capability within the stores, and how they can leverage local store marketing. They are like business consultants, really, attending meetings as well as being present in the stores.

Since we’ve had some new additions to the leadership team, we’ve increased the frequency of meetings both with our Franchise Advisory Council, our core strategic governing body which includes some of our larger franchisees, and their selected members, to support in the decision-making on direction of travel of the brand across all functions. With all the external pressures we are experiencing from the market, and the things are changing in connection with a new team, we’ve also got monthly franchise operator calls in where we give them an update on the work streams and the progress that’s being made. We have an open culture with lots of conversations taking place. We have operations excellence specialists, for example, who will go out and support some of our smaller partners. So we can tailor our support depending on the resource they have in their organisation.

We look at our estate in a pragmatic way. Ultimately the job is to sell more pizzas, so how do we attract more customers in, the pizza market being a competitive one. We’ve a successful partnership with Haven, for example, and which provides a new way to access customers who might not have ever tried the brand before. We’ve got to think about how we’re acquiring new customers in different ways, given say that we are challenging Domino’s who are bigger than us. So we have holiday park partnerships, a partnership with rugby football union and Leicester Tigers, and MK Dons Arena - are all great ways to do this.

You introduced some new store designs last year – how successful were these and do you plan any further enhancements?

Some of the new store designs already launched in the US and internationally – new décor, lighting etc – will be launched here. We are trying to continually evolve the brand in terms of how it looks from the consumer perspective, as well as via the app and the web and the user experience there. A significant four out of five of our UK customers order via web or app so that it is a really critical experience point in terms of the journey. But we will be going on that journey of launching the new design in the UK soon, and it’s a question of how it works operationally and making sure we pull together the design with the international team in terms of the menu and sales mix, and the needs of our UK business. We’re very excited about what it’s going to look like, but it will help to elevate the brand further in terms of look and feel by premiumising the brand, and we’re looking at rolling that out as quickly as possible.

We have also dropped trailers – like a bespoke new unit –into some of the stadiums such as Leicester Tigers and Burnley Football Club for match days. We’re also going to be launching our first such site at Twickenham in the smaller kiosk format. We are looking at how we build asset types that fit the different needs of our clients and our franchisees, and offer them opportunities they can invest in and test and trial in different locations.

Longer term, we’re looking at evolving the brand in terms of what customer needs look like in a post-Covid world as people move back to office spaces and travelling, as to what some of our urban area sites look like and the channels we can service and offer pizza through. Pizza by the slice, for instance, or servicing high, transient locations.

Customer expectations have also changed in recent years; how will you address this and continue to enhance the customer journey?

Customer expectations are always changing and the world around you can change, and expectations change with that world. We’re currently working through an enhanced user experience through a new website which we’re rolling out and is in test trial right now. And hopefully by the start of quarter two this year, we’ll be rolling out a new app so that our customers will get a better user experience from order to payment to delivery. There’s definitely been a habitual change in that customers are now using web/app and aggregators for pizza delivery, but in certain urban areas customers are coming back to collection. So one thing we’ve got to continue to do is review the menu that is on offer in certain locations and the price points, and equally what do we offer in store, and it may be that some of our estate probably needs some upgrading, but we have a plan we are working to on that in terms of how do we invest and make sure we get the brand online with the new imagery we want it to have.

As customer expectation continues to change, and as the delivery channel has become popular with other fast casual operators, we would certainly not rule out sit down in our stores, but it’s not in our immediate plans, but we are open to the future and how we can open more channels.

Papa Johns is known for putting people first, how does this work as an employer and with franchisees?

Out of all the ingredients when it comes to making great pizzas, our people are our most valuable, whether it’s our head office teams who bring the brand to life in marketing or the business development arena through to our franchisees; they are all real people who have invested into the brand. And this feeds through to our team in the stores.

Every pizza is handmade, the dough is fresh, the ingredients are fresh. Our tag line is “better ingredients, better pizza”, and you can add on people as part of that too because it is handmade pizza made in a traditional way. We’ve got a new HR director starting and we will be looking at reviewing and enhancing our training to improve the capability of our franchise operators and store teams to deliver a better instore experience for our customers. We’re also helping them build their own organisational structure and talent of their team to unlock more capability. A major aspect of this is culture blended with this strategy, and which we are working through. And we’ve done a few things recently on how do we bring back culture to the forefront whether that’s incentives for our team members to win something called the Golden Slice through to our Fast Fridays, and getting our head office teams out to stores too to build connectivity.

Other things could be supporting Black History month, understanding more about the neurodiversity of our teams – such as helping with the mental health of our teams with the launch of Thoughtful Thursdays, and helping to provide self-help to our teams, and engaging with things that matter to our teams right now. Just being four months in, there will be more that I can develop and uncover as we go on.

Are you aiming to add to your team?

As we shape our strategy we will be looking to add to the head office team and how we shape our specialist functions such as for the web and app development. We’re going to be hiring and bringing in some great talent which can only help us continue to develop and drive growth forward for the brand.

How will the UK operation be used as a springboard for growth in other markets?

The UK (circa 500 stores) is the second biggest market after the US, globally, and the international hub is based out of the UK, making sure that our presence here is key for our global brand presence. We’ve also elevated the way we partner with the US brand in terms of how we simplify and centralise some of the ways we do business, and how we can use the UK market as a test bed for future innovation, we having an innovation hub here in the UK where we can test dough spinners, for example. This helps with our partnership standing with the US in terms of where we go, as well as with other markets like the Middle East, Korea and South America, which don’t have the head office resource and are 100% franchise-based or operated, we can use the UK as a hub for those arenas. We only opened it 18 months ago in Milton Keynes, so it’s still a pretty new facility.

Papa Johns has one of the most diverse teams in the QSR market – how do you continue to nurture diversity and inclusivity?

Being people first, this is a critical part of our core values –accepting diversity, understanding the diverse workforce we have whether in the office or store teams. One thing I am proud of is that this business is massively diverse, reflecting a variety of different backgrounds and cultures and who in turn reflect the different views and experiences in the office. This is reflected equally out to our estate and franchise community and store teams.

We probably have one of the most diverse workforces that many business in the UK could have, but over time there is also more that we can do, again with the partnership with the US business, as to how can we elevate things that are more important. This can be from how do we identify and support calendar dates such as Black History Month, how do we elevate the understanding around neurodiversity, how do we support more with mental health and wellbeing, how do we support people from different background (LGBTQ+), the environment, and what can we do more of.

We are an inclusive business, but I feel there’s more we could be doing to be industry-leading. We’re happy with where we are, but unhappy with where we want to get to because we want to continue evolving as we understand more around the D&I aspect, and we want to understand more and lead in it, such as by making our training more accessible for people who do not have English as a first language, because I feel ultimately this a win-win for all involved – our teams, customers and the business.

One of Papa Johns values is ‘fun’. How do you regularly incorporate fun into the workplace? Pizza should be fun! It’s a fun product, and is usually consumed when people are having fun whether that’s family time, a celebration or people are watching the sport, for example, but I think there’s more we could do internally in relation to this. Therefore, we’ve relaunched our Pizza Games with their regional heats – everything from how quickly can you pack and build boxes or make 16 pizzas, say. The final, winning team from Selly Oak in the West Midlands are now going to be flying out, all expenses paid, at the end of March to Orlando to compete against the US and international teams in the Global Pizza Games Final. And we’re going to be doing something around how they best represent the UK. We’re not competitive in way, shape or form, but clearly we want to beat the Americans on their own turf! That would be an amazing place to be!

Then we have Fast Friday. Every ‘payday Friday’, we get as many of our head office teams out visiting as many restaurants as possible on what is, in essence, the busiest day of the month, taking recognition, swag, celebrating those who’ve won incentives previously, and going shoulder to shoulder with things like ‘beat the boss’, and seeing how quickly you can make a pizza. This helps to add a bit of fun and connectivity with the brand centrally and the store teams. We’re also doing more incentives for our top performers delivering against our key metrics. We’ve done the Golden Slice over Christmas, an incentive to drive energy and effort behind what’s important to have a great business, and recognising the teams who have been incredible delivering against those metrics, because we’ve had some record breakers in the store estate and it’s important to recognise them.

Some of our franchises do their own competitions, and one of the things we want to do and evolve is how do we make culture centric to what we do. I always think that culture drives strategy. You can have a strategy in any organisation, but if you have a strategy without a culture and the fun that goes with it, it’s just a strategy. It’s the culture which binds everything together. I ask myself every day, if I were a team member, why would I work here? And if I can’t answer that question, what is it I need to do to make our team members answer that with a ‘I’ve got loads of reasons why’, culture being part of having people wanting to be with us on the journey we’re going on. I think this brand’s got so much potential.

I’m only four months in and I see the journey that the brand’s been on in terms of growth in the UK has been great, but the future is going to be even more exciting than where we’re going and where we can get to, and despite all of the doom and gloom out in the world people outside the business talk about, I feel that we will ride out through the storm and come out the other side all the stronger for it.