Improving the process of donating delicious pizza kits.
Little Caesars opened their first store in 1959, and the organization has established stores in every state and 25 countries worldwide. In 1997, the company launched the Little Caesars Pizza Kit Fundraising program. The self-assembled pizza kits have a par-baked crust and come with packets of cheese, sauce and pepperoni. There are multiple versions available. These kits allow groups such as schools, sports teams, churches and other non-profit organizations across the United States and Canada to raise money by selling pizzas that you can make at home.
Modernizing Distribution and Digital Experiences
Little Caesars wanted to update digital services supporting the operations of their fundraising program, including the website and backend processes. The COVID pandemic created additional urgency for these initiatives because the existing model required physical door-to-door selling for fundraising, which was no longer possible. Similarly, utilizing a single point for delivery or distribution had also become less viable amidst lockdowns and other restrictions.
Instead, Little Caesars began asking, “what would a direct sale and direct shipping look like for our fundraising pizza kit products?”
The biggest change would be shifting away from one-day delivery (where a big truck drops off all the pizzas for a fundraiser) to a direct-to-consumer model. To make this new model a reality, several major requirements needed to be met:
- The process needed to be enabled without driving costs up and negatively impacting fundraisers.
- With a perishable product in tow, transit time needed to be minimized.
- Little Caesars would need to bring several distribution centers online to ensure the kits were being delivered from the closest distribution center.
- Orders, payment processing and logistics all needed to be integrated seamlessly.
Having worked together on other projects, Little Caesars reached out to OST to deliver a comprehensive digital solution on time and within budget.
OST Enables Fundraising With an Ecommerce Solution
OST’s Application Development team worked on this digital commerce solution using Azure data services. OST’s responsibility was to architect the solution, write the code, develop the custom web application and then provide all that material to Little Caesars for implementation. The more complex pieces of development involved integrating the solution with Little Caesars’ processes and making sure the solution worked with fulfillment and Little Caesars payment processing.
OST’s experts were up for the challenge. In early 2020, the Little Caesars Pizza Kit Fundraising program was a siloed standalone organization. After the fundraising division was formally integrated into Little Caesars just a few short months later, OST helped navigate some of the new challenges. Throughout the engagement, OST helped the fundraising division seamlessly incorporate with the enterprise. And now, pizza kits are shipped to the door of each individual without the need to schedule everything around a big delivery day and require everyone to gather at a single drop-off location.
Additionally, fundraisers can stay safe and have a much broader reach. They are no longer limited to local geography. Fundraisers don’t need to go door-to-door gathering order details on paper forms. Instead, individuals can simply place orders online. With digital selling capabilities, Pizza Kit Fundraising products are directly shipped to the destination.
Little Caesars experiences immediate ROI working with OST, operating more efficiently and integrating systems from across organizations.
20,100 Fundraising Orders across 3.5 months
$775.000 In sales across 3.5 months
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OST is proud to have been part of such a meaningful project, both for Little Caesars and all the other organizations they help support. By architecting and building this application and all its component parts in the course of just three months, we were able to demonstrate some of our greatest strengths:
- Deep cross-functional expertise
- Close collaboration with client stakeholders
- Fast, iterative discovery and delivery for digital products To drive your next digital project toward success, contact OST today!
