ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, November 24, 1996 TAG: 9611220010
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
If you polled 100 people, 94 would say they enjoy pizza. All told, Americans eat 100 acres of pizza per day. To satisfy the huge pizza appetite, there are 60,000 U.S. pizza restaurants. They derived 20 to 40 percent of their 1995 sales of $32 billion from deliveries. Two industry leaders, Papa John's and Domino'z Pizza, offer only takeout or delivery.
Fact: Per-person mozarella cheese consumption was 8.3 pounds last year; most was eaten on pizza.
Here's how the top five pizza companies did in 1995:
Pizza Hut 11,000 locations $5.3 billion of sales
Domino's Pizza 5,200 locations $2.6 billion of sales
Little Caesars 4,700 locations $2 billion of sales
Papa John's 880 locations $460 million of sales
Sbarro 770 locations $415 million
Delivery policies of Roanoke Valley pizza parlors
Within your delivery area, do you refuse to deliver to any address, street or neighborhood because of concern for the safety of your delivery drivers?
Domino's Pizza [six locations ] - Yes. "I'm not going to put my people at risk," said Bill Blankenship, owner of two stores.
Papa John's [four locations] - Yes. "We have cut off Ferncliff [Apartments] because of an incident with one of our drivers," said Ann Andrews, Williamson Road store supervisor.
Pizza Hut [eleven locations] - Yes. "Some streets we can't deliver to because our drivers in the past have been approached or hurt in some way or the police department has given us crime figures for that street, that corner, that [indicate crime] is much higher that the average level..."
Little Caesars [seven locations] - No. "We have a policy that everthing is pretty much open" as long as the employee feels safe, said Pat Flanigan, owner.
Pizza Den [three locations] - No. "We don't have any area that would fall in that category," said Dennis Flannagan, co-owner.
Peppers pizza and sub shop, Salem [one location] - No. "We really don't have that problem," said Glenn Howell, co-owner.
LENGTH: Medium: 56 lines ILLUSTRATION: GRAPHIC: 5 logos by staff. color.by CNB