Papa John’s Rated No. 1 Limited Service Restaurant by American Customer Satisfaction Index, with Highest Category Score in Survey History

LOUISVILLE, Ky.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Papa John’s is tops in customer satisfaction among limited-service restaurants, according to the 2012 American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) released today. Papa John’s achieved the highest score ever by an individual brand in the Limited Service Restaurant category, and it is the 11^th time in the past 13 years that Papa John’s has posted the highest score among national pizza businesses.

“We take great pride in the ACSI ranking, and it is a real testament to our franchise and corporate restaurant operators and team members, and their focus on delivering a superior-quality product with excellent service.”

“A lot of people want to own quality, but it takes time and costs money to own quality,” said John Schnatter, Papa John’s Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. “For more than 27 years, ‘Better Ingredients, Better Pizza’ has been the foundation of everything we strive for as a company. It’s this long-term commitment to quality and providing our loyal customers with excellent service and superior quality pizza that has driven our success. And we will continue applying these core principles throughout every facet of our business.”

In addition to the top overall ACSI rating for limited-service restaurants, Papa John’s score of 83 tied the highest rating in the Full Service Restaurant category. Papa John’s also earned the highest score regarding product quality, service quality and customer loyalty in the individual ACSI ratings for pizza businesses.

“We know our customers’ expectations are very high and our team members work hard to deliver on those expectations – including investing in technology and providing pizza lovers with benefits not found with our competitors,” Schnatter said. “We take great pride in the ACSI ranking, and it is a real testament to our franchise and corporate restaurant operators and team members, and their focus on delivering a superior-quality product with excellent service.”

The ACSI ranking comes on the heels of the 2012 Harris Poll EquiTrend® Study naming Papa John’s as its 2012 Pizza Brand of the Year due to the company’s quality and consumer preference for Papa John’s pizza.

About Papa John’s

Headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky, Papa John's International, Inc. (NASDAQ: PZZA) is the world's third largest pizza company. For 11 of the past 13 years, consumers have rated Papa John's No. 1 in customer satisfaction among all national pizza chains in the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). Papa John's also was honored by Restaurants & Institutions Magazine (R&I) with the 2009 Gold Award for Consumers’ Choice in Chains in the pizza segment. Papa John’s is the Official Pizza Sponsor of the National Football League and Super Bowl XLVI and XLVII. For more information about the company or to order pizza online, visit Papa John's at www.papajohns.com.

About ACSI

The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) is a national economic indicator of customer evaluations of the quality of products and services available to household consumers in the United States. The ACSI uses data from interviews with roughly 70,000 customers annually as inputs to an econometric model for measuring customer satisfaction with more than 225 companies in 47 industries and 10 economic sectors, as well as over 100 services, programs, and websites of federal government agencies.

ACSI results are released on a monthly basis, with all measures reported using a scale of 0 to 100. ACSI data have proven to be strongly related to a number of essential indicators of micro and macroeconomic performance. For example, firms with higher levels of customer satisfaction tend to have higher earnings and stock returns relative to competitors. Stock portfolios based on companies that show strong performance in ACSI deliver excess returns in up markets as well as down markets. And, at the macro level, customer satisfaction has been shown to be predictive of both consumer spending and gross domestic product growth. The Index was founded at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business and is produced by ACSI LLC. The ACSI can be found on the Web at www.theacsi.org.