Stop me if you’ve heard this story before: A restaurant chain devises a marketing campaign around a value-priced menu offering that’s almost impossible to beat.
Deal-seeking consumers give the chain a massive traffic boost, and the deal becomes synonymous with the restaurant brand.
But then economic reality hits. Franchisees say they can’t afford to keep offering the deal. Customers, though, can’t seem to forget the deal. And the franchisor finds itself in a pickle between two sides of a footlong bun.
But we’re not talking about Subway’s $5 Footlong here.
“I would go as far as to say that Papa Murphy’s was built on Tuesdays.”
That’s according to Dallas Massey, the take-and-bake pizza chain’s SVP of marketing.
In 2010, the Vancouver, Washington-based Papa Murphy’s launched a $10 Tuesday pizza deal on any large pie. It was a way to get customers to try different pizzas and drive business on a slow day.
“We knew that if we got a Cowboy or a Chicken Bacon Artichoke in front of our guests, they would fall in love with that pizza and that would become their new favorite,” Massey said. “And it worked. It worked for a really long period of time.”
Until it didn’t.
In 2021 and 2022, coming out of the pandemic, costs for just about everything (labor, commodities, new construction) skyrocketed. So, franchisees “stair-stepped” up the prices on $10 Tuesday. In some markets, that meant $10.99, in others $12.99 or more, he said.
“The value perception from $10 to $12.99 is just not the same,” Massey said. “So, we’ve seen a slow and steady decline in traffic on Tuesday, and we’ve identified that as really an opportunity for the brand.”
So, $10 Tuesday is back as of yesterday. Sort of.
Papa Murphy’s is testing the promo at 167 restaurants across the country, about 15% of the system, to look at its impact on transactions, check averages, net sales and more over the next three to six months.
What the company isn’t doing is following the Subway playbook, Massey said.
“One of our franchise partners that is on the FAB (franchise advisory board) is also a Subway franchise partner,” he said. “So, we had a little bit of information there as far as what the brand has gone through. We’re taking a little bit softer approach with this promotion, and trying to say, ‘Let the data speak for itself and come on board when you’re ready.’”
“And I’m not saying it was the wrong approach for Subway. But the Subway approach was like, ‘Look. You guys are doing this or else we’re going to come de-badge your stores.’ That’s not the approach that we’re taking internally.”
In markets where it’s currently offered, Papa Murphy’s is promoting $10 Tuesday with “retro” marketing that harkens back to 2010. (Massey, for the record, agreed with me that calling 2010 “retro” makes those of us of a certain age feel even older than we are.) Ads employ the chain’s old-school green color scheme and TV promos have a high-def vibe as if they were filmed 15 years ago.
“I don’t want to get too far ahead of it,” Massey said. “But yesterday was a great day for the test locations, which is encouraging. We’re still analyzing results, obviously, but in the test markets, they significantly outperformed the non-test markets, which is fantastic and exactly what we were hoping to see.”
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