As a marketer trying to innovate in the fast-paced quick-serve restaurant (QSR) space, it’s hard to get answers to all of your innovation questions. The task becomes even more challenging when you are running up against the clock, you have to budget your research spending wisely, and you can’t lose out on quality. But once you discover the right way to satisfy all three of these needs, it’ll make all the difference in the world.  You’ll be able to flood your pipeline with exciting innovation ideas in an afternoon, with confidence in the results. 

Pizza Hut started their search for a new way of testing, assessing and optimizing innovation ideas a couple of years ago. Pizza Hut’s Marketing Manager, Devon Lawrence, explained what they were looking for:

There are two challenges that Pizza Hut’s marketing team faces regularly. Firstly, the amount of work that needs to be done under tight time frames.

Another challenge that Pizza Hut’s marketing team experienced when looking for a research platform was finding one with built-in flexibility, global scale, and speed. As the frequency and scale of the Pizza Hut team’s research needs grew, other tools they’ve been using weren’t as accessible, affordable, or quick to generate quality results. 

To help Devon and her team get a sense of their ideas’ potential, Upsiide stepped up to the ‘plate’ (we couldn’t help ourselves!). And having run a test study with Upsiide and compared the results of their research with Ipsos data, Pizza Hut learned that Upsiide was offering the same research results at a more affordable rate, with results coming in much more quickly. 

With confidence in our data quality under their belts, the Pizza Hut marketing team began using Upsiide’s idea screening methodology to validate ideas for new menu items, tweak messaging and menu items in-market,  and optimize claims used for limited-time offers (LTOs) and other marketing initiatives.

A recent example of Upsiide in action was when the team used the platform to figure out how one of Pizza Hut’s newest menu items, loaded flatbreads, should be cut. When different opinions started to clash during internal sessions, the marketing  team uploaded their ideas to Upsiide and turned around results on how to slice their flatbreads in an afternoon. 

Another way the marketing team used Upsiide recently was to check which health claims the company should communicate on in-store signs for Covid-19. What do customers care about most: do they want to hear that Pizza Hut employees wear masks? Or that the surfaces are cleaned within a certain timeframe? Or do they want more information about the temperature of the pizza itself? Upsiide helped the team predict the most impactful and important messages in-store, helping them communicate effectively on signage and posters in Pizza Hut stores.

Devon and her team found Upsiide extremely valuable for two reasons: using the platform has dramatically reduced time spent assessing different innovation ideas and reduced the cost of innovation research. Whenever there was an urgent need to assess the potential of ideas, Pizza Hut turned to Upsiide because speed and quality was of the utmost importance. 

Devon believes that Upsiide will continue to be invaluable when it comes to making confident decisions about food innovation.

Looking ahead, Pizza Hut will continue to use Upsiide to optimize their concepts and innovate confidently, at pace. We can’t wait to continue working with Pizza Hut as they develop even more tasty items.