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Since 1984, Papa John’s has been serving it’s signature style pizza to it’s customers and, according to CEO Rob Lynch, it is the fourth largest pizza chain in North America, behind Pizza Hut, Dominos, and Little Caesars. Last August, the chain created a new form of pizza in hopes of, according to Lynch, “bring back the enjoyment of pizza toppings”: the Papa Bowl. This innovation consists of all of Papa John’s pizza toppings (cheese, sauce, meat, etc.) baked in a bowl with no crust. On paper, this sounds like an interesting idea with much potential (think, an advanced version of baked pizza). After ordering one, however, the result was quite the opposite.
Upon inspecting the Papa Bowl, we could see almost all of the toppings, especially the vegetables and the mozzarella cheese. The tomatoes were chopped and the meat sunk to the bottom of the bowl. It should be noted that the bowl we ordered was the “Italian Meets Trio” bowl which consisted of pizza and alfredo sauce, meatballs, pepperoni, vegetables and sausages. Truthfully, it looked quite appetizing.
Upon our first taste, however, all bets were off. The vegetables were very soggy and water seeped through the rest of the bowl. The mozzarella cheese did not seem to sit well with the vegetables and meatballs and, simply put, too much was stuffed into the tray that we could thoroughly enjoy each aspect of the bowl. There was also what appeared to be a hint of garlic butter which skewed the taste further. In short, the Papa Bowl were certainly different from our expectations.
The Papa Bowl was met with negative reviews on social media. One user named Zeke compares the bowl to “boneless pizza” while another user named CocoWrites explains that “We are all God’s children, but he has left us in a hot car with the windows rolled up and he’s been picking up a pack of smokes’ for about six hours now.” While we unfortunately do not believe the bowl has lived up to its reputation either, here are some ways we suggest to improve this innovation:
Drain the vegetables more thoroughly: Again, one reason the Papa Bowl wasn’t appealing to us was due to the water from the vegetables pouring on the other ingredients, making them too soft and mushy to enjoy. Simply putting more effort in draining water out of the vegetables will help to improve the quality of the other ingredients. It will also savor that pizza taste as vegetable pizza is quite dry without the tomato sauce.
Lose the garlic butter: Our assumption is the garlic butter was added to provide a more “baked ziti” taste to the bowl. In truth, however, the garlic butter instead masked the taste of the other ingredients and was even a bit spicy. The pepperoni was powerful enough and the bowl could definitely do without it.
Making these changes, we believe, will improve the taste and reputation of the Papa Bowl. Still, Lynch continues to encourage customers to indulge in a Papa Bowl insisting that “We want our customers to crave something different. We want them to know we are committed to delivering on all of those cravings through our menu.”
