Papa Johns turned its food into a rebrand and its rebrand back into food

Of all of its ingredients, it’s perhaps the signature pepperoncini at Papa Johns that most differentiates the pizza chain from its competitors.

Papa Johns places one of its Mediterranean-grown pepperoncinis in every pizza box along with complimentary garlic dipping sauce. Like fortune cookies at a Chinese restaurant or Andes mints at Olive Garden, these freebies are a bit of hospitality meant to delight customers and build loyalty in a notably unfaithful fast-food category.

Now Papa Johns is taking the pepperoncini a step further by placing it right into your drink: “Cini Dirty Soda” is citrus soda with a zesty, pepper kick.

How Papa Johns went all in on a pepper brand

The brand expansion is happening at a time when Papa Johns is investing $25 million more in marketing this year to improve on its 1% year-over-year revenue growth.

While such shocking food collabs are nothing new, in this case the pizza chain has been working pepperoncini deeper into its brand for a while now. Papa Johns released a new brand identity last year that includes a pepperoncini yellow-green in its color palette alongside colors like reds that evoke sauces and pepperonis.

Coupled with a doughy custom font called Pappy, it’s a brand that’s designed to remind you of pizza with a free side of pepper. Now the pepperoncini has become the inspiration behind a limited-edition drink with Mountain Dew.

Rather than selling the drink in its stores, Papa Johns made it as a limited-edition, do-it-yourself kit available only online. The Papa Johns recipe calls for 8 ounces of Mountain Dew and a quarter ounce of pepperoncini brine with a pepperoncini-brine-and-Italian-seasoning rim and a pepperoncini for garnish. It already sold out, and Papa Johns says it was one of the most engaged sweepstakes the chain has ever done.

“The dirty-soda trend is on the rise, and with our revamped approach we thought it was the perfect opportunity to infiltrate culture with our iconic fan-favorite garnish,” Papa Johns CMO Jenna Bromberg tells Fast Company. “Our quality ingredients are our point of differentiation, which is where we’re focusing as a brand.”

The “Cini Dirty Soda” taps into the dirty-soda craze of shops like Swig and Sodalicious while embracing the trend toward adventurous flavor profiles for products like the pickle soda Popeyes released last month. It also links the pizza chain to Mountain Dew, a soda brand that recently overhauled its visual identity and is making investments in becoming more culturally relevant.

For a category as competitive as pizza, such small gestures as a free pepper and sauce can go a long way toward growing and cementing loyalty. Papa Johns is finding new ways to lean into its signature freebie.

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