Online Sales Prove to Be A Winner for Papa John's UK

Recent sales figures for Papa John's pizza suggest that when it comes to ordering pizza the dot-com bubble is still going strong.

The pizza company, famous for its 'Better Ingredients, Better Pizza' promise, saw its online weekly sales figures top £100,000 for the first time in May - marking a steady increase since the launch of online ordering two years ago.

The total for online sales now stands at over £6.5million, with the record sales figure illustrating a staggering 178 percent increase from the weekly average in 2006.

Simon Wallis, director of marketing, said: "We are delighted to have broken the £100,000 mark for the first time. The growth rate of our online trade over the last two years has been phenomenal.

"At the moment, our online sales currently average over 22 percent of total sales, a figure we expect to continue to rise as more and more customers look to the benefits and ease of ordering online.

"We know that as a society we are becoming more internet savvy and this is becoming clearly visible in our figures. In 2006 our total online sales were less than £2million, this year we will be looking to break the £5million barrier.

"This growth online reflects the growth of Papa John's as we continue to expand across the UK.

Already 2008 has seen seven stores open in the first quarter with another eight planned by June, as we look to grow our number of stores by 25 percent this year."

Papa John's recent figures in the UK echo those experienced by the company on the other side of the Atlantic.

In the US, the first week in May saw the company break the $1billion mark for total online sales.