Papa John’s Goes “All Natural” With Ingredients

Papa John’s, whose motto of “Better Ingredients, Better Pizza” you likely know even if you’ve never touched a slice, is making moves to uphold that promise by removing a host of artificial ingredients from its pizzas. “We closed out 2015 announcing our commitment to serve chicken raised without antibiotics and are ringing in the New Year artificial-flavor and synthetic-color free,” said Sean Muldoon, Papa John’s Senior Vice President of Research and Development. This might lead one to wonder what made the ingredients “better” before the change, but to its credit Papa John’s is the first national pizza chain to make a move like this.

It’s unclear whether going all-natural will help Papa John’s recover from a season of poor sales and falling stocks, but it seems like management is banking on the consumer demand for transparency (or at least the appearance of transparency) in ingredients that once helped Chipotle rocket to the top. Hopefully they can do so on a national scale without the same food safety issues that plagued the Mexican chain.

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