Good by Papa Johns

 A few months ago, my wife and I ordered a pizza from Papa John's (a pizza franchise in Canada and I think the USA) and it was not an easy order. So, a few days ago, I received an email offering me 40% off my next order because they "missed me". I thought, maybe it will be easier this time.

I prefer to order pizzas or other fast food via the phone and I usually go and pick it up. I find that faster, and easier than waiting for them to deliver, also I am not a big fan of food delivery services or apps.

I also like to order from a brochure that contains information about all of the food that is available. I can glance at the brochure, pick out the food we want, check the price and then phone it in. I am a bit old-fashioned when it comes to food ordering.

 So, we looked for the brochure from Papa John and could not find it, so I went online to look up their menu, expecting to find a list of pizzas they had and a prize to go with them. Well, to my surprise Papa John's does not have a simple menu. They have pictures of each of their selections which allowed me to see four pizzas at a time without a price on any of them. A line across the top said, "Want to see all of your local pizzas and prices? Tell us which store you’re closest to" Even though I was logged into my account, I had to give them my address again so I could look at prices. 

The menu came up with pictures but this time I could only see three pizzas on the screen, remember I like to see everything at once. I then looked at the type of pizza and now I had to make some decisions. Some of the decisions are easy, what size. Others are not so easy, for example, crust type (six different types)and cust flavour (one flavour).  I had the app on my phone, so I went to show the selections to my wife on the phone but we could only see 2 selections at a time. The other thing I noted was that the online version and the app only allowed me to order for delivery. There was no option that I could find for me to pick up the pizza.

We gave up and then looked for the brochure and found the one for Papa Johns's but there was no phone number for the local store. I went back online and after a few frustrating minutes, I found the number to the store.  I was going to phone but realized that there was not going to be the option to get my coupon honoured as it stated that it appeared to be only for online ordering.  So we picked up another brochure, checked the menu, ordered and picked it up 15 minutes later.

I am sure that there are many people who use and love Papa John's Pizza but I am not technical enough to work their system so I will not be using Papa John's again as they have an ordering system that is too complicated for a person like me who just likes to pick up the phone, order knowing the price I need to pay and being told a time the food will be ready for pick-up.