Papa Johns Can Predict When Your Fridge Is Empty

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• Hacker News
• correct: how to be creepy without being invasive
  by yieldcrv
• I find everything about this upsetting. This level of targeted manipulation should be illegal.

  It seems like the only way to avoid it is to only shop in person and to stick to mom and pop stores that can’t afford to do all these shenanigans, while also avoiding ads like the plague.

  by al_borland
• Isn’t that the default though?

  Maybe I’m rare in that what you describe is literally how I’ve always done it, but are there more people getting groceries delivered than shopping in store now?

  Stores seem plenty full to me.

  by AndrewKemendo
• All american fridges contain at least 20% expired condiments, by volume.
  by dlcarrier

•   > All american fridges contain at least 20% expired condiments, by volume.
  

  Refrigerators are generally sized between 300 and 500 liters. Are you suggesting that most (I won't even say all) refrigerators have 60 liters of expired condiments?
  by dotancohen
• Not all condiments actually go bad when they expire though. I’m convinced somewhere there’s perfectly edible ketchup from the dinosaurs era somewhere.
  by xmcp123
• Alternative framing:

  Instacart sells data to Papa Johns for better pizza ad timing.

  Papa Johns isn’t somehow able to predict this based on their own data (which is the impression I initially got from the headline), they are buying it from Instacart.

  Name and shame.

  by solarkraft
• I'm just... Confused at how any of this is good for society. YOU FUCKING KNOW when your fridge is empty.

  So OK maybe some corp can reprogram you to not restock on food. CONVINCE ME THAT'S GOOD. Is it not just an attempt to make people worse? Less self-sufficient? More miserable?

  by conartist6
• Trying to teach people to garden.
  by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF
• Every fridge between mine and the nearest Papa Johns would need to be empty before I'd consider eating there.
  by gdulli
• That's alot of time, cost and effort just to avoid making better pizza.
  by weare138
• idea is to reach hungry consumers by “knowing what is in their fridge without being too creepy,” lol I think they forgot to realize this is incredibly unsettling and creepy
  by Cshaya
• It's just good utilization of marketing budget.
  by hx8
• Companies have been targeting people with ads when they think they're the most vulnerable for ages. What's bold about this is how not at all subtle it is. "We know there's no food in your fridge. Order a pizza!" seems like something that should make people uncomfortable.
  by autoexec
• > Papa Johns’ “Empty Fridge” campaign ran from late April through last weekend on NBCU streaming supply such as Peacock, NBC Sports and NBCU content across streaming distributors. While it’s too soon to digest the results, Papa Johns knows what it’s looking for.

  They have data for a full month. They know if it worked or not. They decided to make a positive press release despite it failing to increase sales.

  by nitwit005
• Atul Gawande, of Checkslist Manifesto [0] fame, has a great article about the Cheesecake Factory [1].

  He mentions that that they have a model that can predict both guest numbers and revenue:

  “We have forecasting models based on historical data—the trend of the past six weeks and also the trend of the previous year,” Gordon told me. “The predictability of the business has become astounding.” The company has even learned how to make adjustments for the weather or for scheduled events like playoff games that keep people at home."

  And this was in 2012!

  I highly recommend both the book and the article as both talk, in detail, about how to build systems even in very dynamic environments.

  I can only imagine how accurate the models have gotten now.

  0 - https://amzn.to/4y4Riot

  1 - https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/08/13/big-med

  by alexpotato
• This has been in the pipeline for a while now. This is an NYT article from 2012 talking about how Target were, well, targeting women they thought were pregnant based on their shopping habits because that's one of the few points in life when people's shopping habits are maleable: https://archive.is/CUo8O
  by frereubu
• Is this a submarine article[1] by instacart to sell their consumers data? feels like a glowing review of the data. And why would papa jhons accept to be a part of this campaign?

  [1] https://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

  by subygan
• This is absolutely an ad and you can bet Papa Johns signed off on it. Their Chief Marketing Officer provided quotes. Adexchanger is a site about ads owned by an ad company (Access Intelligence, LLC).

  If this ad campaign backfires on them it won't be the first time. They were sued for illegally spamming 500,000 people over text with ads. (https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/11/papa-johns-faces...). Although ultimately, they got away with paying out just 11 million in cash and a whole lot of coupons for their pizza to a tiny fraction of the people they spammed so maybe it was worth it to them in the end.

  by autoexec
• Instacart users should be upset about their data being packaged up and sold. Or maybe there should be half-decent privacy laws that protect them. Otherwise you just get this corporate-orwellianism.

  Anyways, I wonder if instacart can predict political affiliation. I bet their data scientists have at least tried.

  by morkalork
• > Instacart users should be upset about their data being packaged up and sold.

  Instacart users should have been upset about that while reading Instacart's privacy policy prior to signing up and refused to use the service in the first place. Having their data being packaged up and sold was something every user already agreed to.

  by autoexec
• Half decent data privacy laws are wildly overdue.

  My other thought is that companies like Papa John’s that make shitty products are most likely to engage in desperate growth tactics like this.

  You know what helps tempt people into ordering pizza? Making good pizza.

  The problem is that it’s cheaper to purchase analytics and serve an ad for “pizza” at the literal moment the viewer is out of groceries.

  I wonder if their fancy analytics can also tell them how many of these customers regret not just buying groceries after they finish their Papa John’s.

  by Grombobulous
• it's under terms and conditions.

  Instacart is now an ad-company. so as almost every company now.

  ads are just too lucrative to pass up on if you sit on some rich data.

  by dzonga
• People will quite literally sell their first-born for convenience.
  by LocalH
• > The idea is to reach hungry consumers by “knowing what is in their fridge without being too creepy,” said Carrie Drinkwater, chief investment officer at Carat.

  What she means is that they want to do it subtly enough so people aren't creeped out, because when it's put like that it really is creepy.

  by frereubu
• > There are two things Papa Johns doesn’t like to see

  There are three things. Papa Johns also hates to see well compensated employees. They've been successfully sued several times for wage theft, they were forced to stop their “no-poach” policies which prevented franchise owners from hiring workers at other Papa Johns restaurants in an effort to keep wages down, and they insisted that if they had to provide health insurance to their workers they'd pass that cost onto consumers rather than spend a penny of the $87 million in gross profit they were making.

  by autoexec
• Lower wages mean more jobs though, right?

  BTW, why don’t we tax the bots for UBI?

  by cwmoore
• I love Papa Johns and we get their pizza atleast twice a week. Never once did we have have a bad pizza or bad service. All the people i've meet there while picking up are happy and very customer service orientated.

  Whatever their formula is, it's working.

  by cramer4next
• > rather than spend a penny of the $87 million in gross profit they were making.

  PJ's gross profits are much higher than this, in the hundreds of millions, usually over $500M. $87 million is approximately their net income for 2024 ($83.49M, down to $30.5M in 2025).

  https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/PZZA/papa-johns/gr...

  https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/PZZA/papa-johns/ne...

  by tomjakubowski
• Their founder really doesn't like black people either. Do not support Papa Johns. Plenty of other choices for shit pizza.

  [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-44803163

  by tailscaler2026