Saturday, December 10, 2005

Papa John's Makes Christmas Parade Debut

The Columbus, Georgia/ Phenix City, Alabama Christmas Parade had a new entry this year - Papa John's Pizza.  The annual Christmas Parade is a 20 year tradition in the Columbus/Phenix City area. Thousands of people line the downtown streets of Phenix City and Columbus early in the morning to get a great place to watch. The parade starts in downtown Phenix City and ends at the government center of Columbus.

The morning of the parade was the coldest of the year, 30 degrees, but with bright sunshine.  It was a great day for a parade.  The participants had to be in position at 8:30 a.m. for the 10:00 a.m. starting time.  As they assembled, everyone became very excited, because off in the distance they could see the thousands of people waiting to see the floats.

The Papa John's float had a live band playing very lively Christmas music.  Actually, they were more than lively; they ROCKED!  The band consisted of Papa John's employees Dean Curley (drums), Donald Hall (guitar) and his friend Josh (guitar).  Following the float were two Mr. Slicy's (very large pizza slices - see photo) throwing Papa John's cups loaded with candy.

The Papa John's Christmas Parade debut was a great success.  As the band played, the crowd went crazy.  Spectators sang along with the Christmas songs and the two Mr. Slicy's got ambushed by children screaming "Throw me a cup!"

It all started one November afternoon when Scott Pratt, Vice President of Operations for the local franchisee, got a call from Donald Hall, a driver at the Ladonia, Alabama store.  He was all excited about getting Papa Johns in the Columbus/Phenix City Christmas parade.  Donald asked if he could borrow Scott’s truck (a big white job with huge Papa John's logos on the sides and back) because he had an idea to make a Papa John’s float for the parade.  Scott said, "No way," because he knew immediately he wanted to drive himself and help in any way he could.

Scott went to his team to discuss how they could make an impact in this parade. One of Scott’s store managers, Rudy Cimato, always begs Scott on every visit to bring more cups for marketing. As soon as he walked into the Ladonia store that day, he knew exactly what Papa John’s was going to do for the parade.  The next day he ordered 1000 cups. After purchasing the cups, he went to Sam’s and bought approximately 15 bags of candy canes and Christmas chocolate. When the supplies were all in, Donald Hall and his team proceeded to stuff all the cups with the candy and menus for the crowd.

They threw 1000 cups off the back of the float and could have thrown a 1000 more.  Scott says, "Next year we will be more prepared because we definitely plan on making this a new Papa Johns tradition. We were definitely the BIG HIT of this years parade. We can’t wait until next year."