Papa Johns becomes the first restaurant chain to introduce new omnichannel food ordering features, powered by Google Cloud’s latest agentic solution, Gemini Enterprise for Customer Experience.

NEW YORK, Jan. 11, 2026 — At NRF 2026 today, Papa Johns unveiled a significant overhaul of its digital ordering platform, aimed at providing enhanced speed, precision, and instant customization for its global customer base exceeding 150 million. The quick-service restaurant pioneer is the inaugural partner for Google Cloud’s newly launched AI solution, the Food Ordering agent, enabling the pizza company to implement a completely integrated voice and text AI ordering mechanism that eliminates obstacles across all customer interaction points. This Food Ordering agent functions as a component of Gemini Enterprise for Customer Experience, an agentic platform engineered to unify commerce and customer support through an intelligent framework.

Expanding on its previous achievements in drive-thru automation, the Food Ordering agent serves as an all-encompassing omnichannel system that allows companies to roll out premium voice AI assistants throughout mobile applications, websites, phone systems, kiosks, and vehicle-integrated platforms. As Google Cloud’s inaugural client for these innovations, Papa Johns is setting a fresh industry standard for the ‘agentic’ customer journey.

“Papa Johns is a digitally-driven business and, as such, one of our strategic priorities is investing in our technology to deliver a more seamless experience across our assets and owned channels, better connect with our customers, and support greater efficiency across our operations by leveraging data and AI,” said Kevin Vasconi, chief digital and technology officer, Papa Johns. “Our partnership with Google Cloud embodies our commitment to doing exactly that. We’re using Google Cloud’s Food Ordering agent to reimagine what’s possible for our customers. This isn’t just an app update; it’s a fundamental shift in how our customers interact with our brand digitally, making it faster, smarter, and more seamless than ever before.”

Through the Food Ordering agent, Papa Johns has created several core functionalities to enhance the customer journey, which include:

• Boosting revenue through effortless promotion discovery: The ‘Intelligent Deal Wizard’ operates as a virtual assistant that automatically selects optimal value packages and minimizes shopping cart drop-off. This fosters instant brand allegiance and expedites the payment process by eliminating the necessity for users to exit the application searching for superior discount codes.
• Streamlining intricate orders with exactness: The ‘Advanced Voice & Group Ordering’ capability secures income from elaborate, multi-party purchases that conventionally demanded staff assistance. The platform manages conversational subtleties and instantaneous adjustments seamlessly, guaranteeing order precision even for highly complicated demands.
• Effortless, touch-free repeat ordering process: The system recognizes returning Papa Rewards loyalty members and initiates prompts about reordering their latest purchases. Since numerous pizza patrons frequently buy identical items, facilitating a rapid, user-friendly pathway from app launch to order completion is essential.

“The retail industry is entering the era of agentic commerce, where AI is an engine for business value,” said Carrie Tharp, vice president of global solutions and industries at Google Cloud. “By being the first to deploy our omnichannel Food Ordering agent, Papa Johns is moving beyond the chatbot era to create a fluid, intelligent experience that meets hungry customers wherever they are, whether they are in their car, on an app, or at a kiosk.”

Papa Johns will demonstrate this innovation at booth 5507 at NRF 2026: Retail’s Big Show in New York City, presenting live demonstrations of these capabilities to participants, with a nationwide customer rollout planned for completion by year-end 2026.

About Papa Johns

Papa John’s International, Inc. (Nasdaq: PZZA) was founded in 1984 with a singular mission: BETTER INGREDIENTS. BETTER PIZZA.® The company maintains that utilizing premium components results in exceptional pizza quality. Its signature dough contains just six ingredients and remains fresh, never frozen. Papa John’s garnishes its pizzas with authentic mozzarella cheese, pizza sauce crafted from tomatoes ripened on the vine that progress from plant to container within 24 hours, and meat devoid of extenders. The chain became the first national pizza delivery brand to declare the elimination of artificial flavors and synthetic colors across its complete menu. Papa John’s maintains dual headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia and Louisville, Kentucky, ranking as the planet’s third-largest pizza delivery enterprise with over 6,000 locations spanning roughly 50 nations and regions. To learn more about the business or place online pizza orders, visit or get the Papa John’s mobile application for iOS or Android devices.

About Google Cloud

Google Cloud represents the modern approach to cloud computing, delivering artificial intelligence, infrastructure, developer resources, data management, security, and cooperative solutions designed for present and future needs. Google Cloud provides a robust, completely unified and fine-tuned AI architecture featuring proprietary global-scale infrastructure, specially designed processors, generative AI frameworks and creation platforms, plus AI-driven software, all aimed at assisting enterprises in digital transformation. Organizations across 200+ nations and jurisdictions rely on Google Cloud as their dependable technology collaborator.

SOURCE Google Cloud