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Food

Pizza Chains Are Killing It While Other Restaurants' Sales Suffer

After all, why go out to eat and face humanity when you can have a giant circle of bread and mozzarella delivered straight to your door?
Photo via Flickr user rightsandwrongs

It's quarterly earnings season, that wonderful time when companies deliver a self-evaluation report card to shareholders, and times are tough in the chain restaurant business. Of the 16 restaurant chains that had reported earnings to Bloomberg by this past Wednesday, 15 of them reported declines in sales or growth as of earlier this week. But there are a couple of standouts still killing it despite what seems to be a restaurant recession—and they're both pizza purveyors: Domino's and Papa John's.

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Pies are flying out the door at two of America's most popular pizza franchises; at Domino's, sales are up 10 percent, while sales at Papa John's are up nearly 8 percent. After all, why go out to eat and face humanity when you can have a giant circle of bread and mozzarella delivered straight to your door?

Domino's in particular has been crushing it in recent years, ever since its CEO described its pizza as "devoid of flavor" in a national ad campaign in 2010 and introduced new and improved pizzas, with sales and the company's stock surging in the aftermath.

WATCH: The Pizza Show

"It is difficult to say that we are benefiting from any potential "restaurant recession"– especially as we have seen 21 consecutive quarters of positive same store sales growth (and seven consecutive years of positive sales) domestically," Tim McIntyre, the Executive Vice President of Communication, Investor Relations, and Legislative Affairs told MUNCHIES. "Following the premise implied here, it's being argued that we've been benefiting from something other than our own efforts, for seven years now. I don't think that's the quite the case."

McIntyre points to a variety of digital ordering options, vastly improved food quality, advertising, and new store designs as some of the reasons Domino's keeps putting up great numbers. As Bloomberg notes, being able to order a pizza by Twitter or by yelling at your Amazon Echo that you want pizza can't hurt—this is the kind of stuff kids used to dream about. And with pizza delivery drones and robots taking to the skies and hitting the streets alongside a car that is also a pizza oven, it looks like there are more sunny skies ahead. But even if the economic forecast turns out not to be as good, pizza will probably still do well.

"Are we recession-resistant? History has shown that we are, as is the pizza industry as a whole. Pizza provides an opportunity to feed a family a meal they love at a great value," McIntyre told MUNCHIES.

READ MORE: Pizza Is America's Favorite Form of Stress Relief

And that may be true whatever may come. A team of stock analysts recently raised the outlook on Papa John's stock because they believed political and civil unrest around the election means people will order in instead of going out for dinner. In the future, maybe we'll be happily ordering our pepperoni pies by Twitter and having them delivered by drone to our doomsday bunkers.