What Papa John's Actually Does With Its Leftovers

Because food is perishable, restaurants like Papa John's inevitably have food leftover that it can't simply hold onto for the next customer to come purchase. The easiest solution would be to simply dump whatever food is leftover at the end of the night into the trash, but food waste is a big problem in the United States and abroad, even as many people go hungry, which is why many businesses are starting to implement practices that limit food waste and put leftover food to good use.

In the case of Papa John's, that comes in the form of its Harvest Program, which the pizza company first put together back in 2010. Between 2010 and 2022, the program is said to have donated 3.4 million meals. Apparently dissatisfied with those numbers, Papa John's announced in 2022 that it planned to donate another 10 million meals by 2027; effectively increasing the number of meals it donates sevenfold. That's a pretty ambitious goal, to say the least.

One hurdle that Papa John's faces in achieving this goal is the fact that it only makes pizzas to order. Unlike food donations from grocery stores, Papa John's doesn't just have pizzas lying around waiting for people to come pick them up, which it can donate if sales are slow. Customers order a specific pizza, that pizza gets made, and that's it. Which is to say, the only reason Papa John's would even have pizzas to donate would be if someone cancelled an order or forgot to pick it up. 

Given that Americans consume more than 3 billion pizzas every year (via The Economic Times) and that Papa John's averages just under $5 billion in yearly global sales, 3.4 million meals donated over a 12-year period doesn't really seem that impressive. That equates to roughly 280,000 meals a year. At face value, that's objectively a huge number of pizzas, but given the entire context, it's not as much as you might expect; hence the call to increase donation numbers.

A look at the chatter of Papa John's employees online gives some insight into what seems to be the problem. Basically, leftover pizzas are more often than not just eaten by the employees at the end of the day, if not simply tossed in the trash. There are plenty of ways to reheat leftover pizza when you're at home, but usually that means it's been stored in the fridge. At the store, leftover pizza has typically been sitting under a heat lamp for several hours and isn't really fit for consumption.

This isn't to wag the finger at Papa John's for falling short on its promises. The pizza business just doesn't really lend itself well to food donations. While there may be one or two pizzas leftover at the end of the night on busy days, the fact that food is made to order means the actual availability of these pizzas is inconsistent compared to other kinds of food retailers. Coordinating food donation pickups on an inconsistent schedule sounds difficult. Time will tell if Papa John's hits its 10 million donations goal by next year.