NetWorld Alliance LLC, the company that created Web sites devoted to automated teller machines and kiosks, now is also reporting on cheese, tomato sauce and studies of the pizza-deprived.
The Pewee Valley-based Internet company has added a Web portal called Pizza Marketplace to its roster and hired Steve Coomes, the former editor-in-chief of New Albany-based Pizza Today, to run it. Coomes joined NetWorld in August, and the new Web site was launched Nov. 5.
“I’ve been in print 13 years, and this whole Web thing fascinated me, making it work and making a profit at it,” Coomes said. “This was an opportunity to join a fast-moving, progressive company … a chance to get in on the ground floor.”
The site is at http://www.pizzamarketplace.com.
As with other NetWorld portals, Pizza Marketplace is a business-to-business Web site. It includes pizza industry news, stock prices, market prices, features, trends, plus a research page, a chat page and columns by industry experts on dough and other pizza issues.
The site also has a number of advertisers, ranging from Louisville-based Paradise Tomato Kitchens Inc. and New Albany-based ProMedia Group to The Middleby Corp. of Elgin, Ill., and Englewood, Colo.-based Multifoods Distribution Group Inc.
Early editions of Pizza Marketplace included articles about the launch of a cheese exchange by Dairy.com, a drop in tomato production caused by a California heat wave, and a Pizza Hut-sponsored study of the habits of high school and college students who agreed not to eat pizza for 30 days.
Pizza Today responds with new site
In response to the creation of Pizza Marketplace, the New Albany-based industry trade magazine Pizza Today is revamping its Web site, said Pete Lachapelle, president and publisher of Macfadden Protech LLC, the owner of 19-year-old Pizza Today. The new Web site, created by Mission Data Services, was launched Nov. 21 at http://www.pizzatoday.com.
The new Pizza Today site offers operations-specific features organized by headings representing the different parts of a pizza store: “Front of the House,” “The Make Line,” “Back Office” and so on. A vendor directory and article archive also will be added to the site.
Pizza Today also plans to launch a hard-copy newsletter it will mail to pizza chain executives and restaurant operators by the end of the year, Lachapelle said. The company also runs three Pizza Expo trade shows and runs the for-profit National Association of Pizza Operators.
But even as his company prepares to compete with NetWorld Alliance, Lachapelle said he doesn’t think there’s much call right now for Web-based trade publications in the pizza industry. He said he thinks the only people getting their pizza industry news from the Web will be corporate employees of companies such as Papa John’s International Inc. and Pizza Hut.
“It’s not a white-collar industry, like ATMs and kiosks,” Lachapelle said. “Most pizza franchisees don’t have time to jump onto the Web every 45 minutes to check the news.”
Also, flour dust has been known to cause problems for a restaurant’s computers, he said.
“It’s not a friendly environment for keyboards,” Lachapelle said.
But Coomes and Dick Good, NetWorld’s CEO, disagreed with that view. In an e-mail to Business First, Coomes said he talked with a Domino’s franchisee who said he was specifically looking for a Web site with daily news about the pizza industry.
“Beyond that, every waking hour of time in the shop isn’t spent with your hands in the dough,” Coomes wrote. Operators could easily take a break and logon, he said.
Good said he expects the target audience will check the site “a couple of times a week to check out the main stories or chat … with peers (elsewhere).
“Most importantly, they don’t have to wait for the mail to get their news once a month, when it is sometimes stale by then,” Good said.
Pizza a different topic for company
Pizza represents a bit of a shift for NetWorld, which previously focused on the ATM and kiosk industries.
NetWorld Alliance’s first Web portal, ATM Marketplace (formerly known as ATM Magazine) has more than 10,000 registered users and is getting about 2.8 million hits a month now, Good said. It is at http://www.atmmarketplace.com.
The second portal, Kiosk Marketplace, has grown from no users to 5,600 users as of October, he said. It is at http://www.kioskmarketplace.com. It is aimed at people involved in the electronic kiosk industry.
NetWorld also last year bought the http://www.Kiosk.org Web site, which is a newsletter for a kiosk industry association. It has some news and comments from former owner Craig Keefner, who is now a senior vice president of NetWorld Alliance.
Kiosk.org is based in Minneapolis, and membership in its related association, Kiosk.org Association, has grown from 110 companies to 200 this year, Good said.
The success of its existing properties meant NetWorld didn’t have to raise as much money this year as originally anticipated, Good said. For one thing, NetWorld achieved profitability in May, four months ahead of schedule, he said.
Good said the margin was “several thousand dollars,” but he declined to be more specific.
NetWorld immediately used that money to hire more staff, including a financial officer, a site development coordinator and an in-house marketing person, all of whom will help the company grow more, Good said.
NetWorld had planned to raise about $450,000 in private money this year to fund further growth, such as the new pizza portal, and ongoing operations, Good said. But low interest rates and NetWorld’s income meant the company had to raise only $100,000 from investors, Good said.
NetWorld borrowed an additional $125,000 from National City Bank and Bank of Louisville to help launch Pizza Marketplace, he said.
The company still is in a hiring mode, currently looking for people to fill two marketing and sales positions. Those hires would bring the company’s staff to 25, Good said.
Next year, NetWorld anticipates hiring additional editorial and information technology staff, Good said.
The company plans to launch a fourth Web portal, for churches and the businesses that serve them, during the second quarter of next year, he said.
Good said some of the funds to launch that portal will come from Pizza Marketplace, which NetWorld expects to bring in “significant revenue” by March and make NetWorld “profitable again on a monthly basis.”
NetWorld also is looking at portals for the point-of-sale and smart-card industries, Good said, but it’s giving pizza and churches a priority because of the availability of strategic partners, potential profitability and existing competition.
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