Papa John's Delivers a Record 13,500 Pizzas to San Diego's NASSCO Shipyard; Application to Be Submitted to Guinness World Records for Official Authentication as ``World's Largest Pizza Order''
More than 6,000 NASSCO employees, subcontractors and Navy sailors at the shipyard were on hand to accept the pizza delivery from Papa John's, a reward for completing construction of the Navy's newest dry cargo/ammunition ship, the USNS Lewis and Clark. The crew has spent the last 2 1/2 years building the auxiliary ship, which measures 689 feet long, 106 feet wide, travels up to 20 knots and has a displacement of 41,000 metric tons.
The current Guinness World Record for "World's Largest Pizza Order" was set in August 1998 with an order placed by the VF Corporation of Greensboro, North Carolina, U.S.A. for 13,386 pizzas at 180 locations across the United States.
Not only did the 13,500-pizza order from NASSCO exceed the current "World's Largest Pizza Order," but all of today's Papa John's pizzas were delivered to a single location, with a single delivery time. Papa John's plans to submit an application - supplemented with photographs, video, and independent witness statements - to Guinness World Records for official authentication as the new record holder.
"Our staff eagerly stepped up to the challenge to complete this order in the tight timeframe provided by the military, " says Maggie Scivicque, director of sales and marketing in San Diego. "What excites us the most is that NASSCO received bids from all the large pizza chains and picked Papa John's because of their confidence level in our team to handle the order, as well as the quality pizza their employees would love."
The NASSCO employees enjoyed custom 6-inch Papa's Perfect Pan pizzas, created by Papa John's specifically for this occasion. To meet the 11 a.m. delivery time, Papa John's utilized the resources of 15 San Diego area restaurants beginning at 6 a.m. with each making approximately 56 pizzas per minute throughout the morning. That's nearly one pizza per second!
A ship like the USNS Lewis and Clark has never before been seen on water, and a pizza delivery like this has never been recorded, according to Guinness World Records. Putting this massive pizza delivery in perspective, consider that:
- Lined up end-to-end, the 13,500 six-inch pizzas would span almost 10 times the length of the USNS Lewis and Clark.
- The 2,725 pounds of cheese is more than the combined weight of the offensive and defensive lines of the San Diego Chargers football team.
- The 36,000 slices of pepperoni, if stacked, would stand 23 times as tall as the USNS Lewis and Clark.
"It's very hard work building a ship, let alone a first of its kind," says Karl Johnson, spokesperson for NASSCO. "The ship returned from its final sea trials on Wednesday, and to recognize all of the millions of hours our team put into building this new ship, we thought it would be a popular decision to feed them all a lot of pizza. You can bet there will be folks out there who will eat theirs, mine, and look for another!"
More than 100 Papa John's team members were needed to prepare the 13,500 sausage, pepperoni, and cheese pizzas. At 10:30 a.m., 20 specialty vans equipped with heaters and filled with Papa John's pizzas converged at NASSCO to create a caravan - led by red, white, and blue Jeep Liberty vehicles - into the Shipyard.
Once there, the vans split into two teams and entered the shipyard from two different gates to deliver the pizzas in one-half hour, the maximum amount of time the vans were allowed into the shipyard, according to military security.
NASSCO is the largest manufacturing employer in San Diego. Additional information on NASSCO can be found at www.nassco.com.
Headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky, Papa John's (NASDAQ:PZZA) is the world's third largest pizza company. For seven years running, consumers have rated Papa John's No. 1 in customer satisfaction among all national QSR chains in the highly regarded American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). For more information about the company or to order pizza online, visit Papa John's at www.papajohns.com.
CONTACT: Papa John's, Louisville
Tish Muldoon,
502-261-4987
SOURCE: Papa John's