DiGiorno Pizza subtweeted Papa John’s Wednesday suggesting that its sales are up, while Papa John’s are down. There’s just one problem: DiGiorno’s sales are barely up at all.
Us: 🍕📈
Them: 🍕📉— DiGiorno (@DiGiorno) November 1, 2017
Statista’s sales numbers for all of the leading frozen pizza brands in the United States from 2011-2017 show that between 2016 and 2017 sales of DiGiorno’s pizzas were fairly stagnant. The Nestle-owned pizza maker’s sales are considerably higher than its frozen competitors, but are down from 2013 and almost identical to what they were in 2016.
DiGiorno doubled down on the claim with this tweet:
Better Pizza.
Better Sales.— DiGiorno (@DiGiorno) November 1, 2017
Again, based on numbers compiled by Stastista, DiGiornio racked up $1.014 billion in sales in the 52 weeks ending Janary 24 2017. Meanwhile, Papa John’s had sales of $1.71 billion over the same time period.
The comments are a response to Papa John’s third-quarter financial report that was released Tuesday. The net worth of its founder John Schnatter dropped $70 million in less than 24 hours after the report was released. On the earnings call, he claimed that a downturn in sales numbers for the company was the result of the national anthem protests happening in the NFL. Pizza Hut shut down that claim earlier this week.