DXB F&B Awards 2024: Jury member Tapan Vaidya on how AI can make pizza better

Innovation is often said to be the key to a brand’s success. And in this vein Tapan Vaidya, the chief executive officer of PJP Investments Group (UAE, KSA, Jordan), has found a way to use artificial intelligence (AI) to create the perfect pizza for the Papa Johns franchise — owned and operated by the group — in the region.

What goes into making a good slice? It’s all in the ratios — the right combination of flour and water to make the dough soft and yet crunchy; the amount of meat (or veggies) and cheese spread over each bite; and the right amount of heat to ensure it’s cooked just so.

“We have a camera stationed right above the cut table, which is where the pizza is boxed and then cut into slices. We capture the final image of a pizza before it is boxed. And this image is uploaded to an AI programme that scores every pizza. We have a specialised way of grading how a pizza is made, how it should look, how each pizza should look… if the pizza is not made right, it is flagged immediately. The restaurant manager will go and rectify it and make sure the crew member who made the pizza is coached so that [mistake] does not happen again,” explains Vaidya.

Every bite counts

It’s all about the integrity of the bite, he tells City Times, in an interview: “If a pizza is supposed to have five different toppings, the customer must get the taste of those toppings in every bite,” he says.

It’s all part of the ROC promise. While talking to Vaidya, we discover his love for acronyms: he recruits only PhDs and wants all his people to deliver ABCD. “ROC refers to ‘return of customer’. I tell my teams that you must take such great care of every customer that he or she only thinks of returning. Then there is ABCD, which is going ‘above and beyond the call of duty’. When you do ABCD, ROC, naturally happens. And if you take care of ROC, ROI [return on investment] will take care of itself.

“And as far as recruitment is concerned, we only recruit PhDs. I define PhD as people with passion, hunger and drive,” he laughs.

The pizza company, explains Vaidya, is one of the three major players in the market along with Domino’s and Pizza Hut. “The fact is, just the three of us together represent 300-plus restaurants in the UAE. So, it’s not easy, but as long as we execute our plans correctly, we will make sure that our territory is protected,” he adds.

Vadiya has been in the restaurant business for about 38 years; but his first brush with the industry actually came from a place not of passion but necessity. When he was in college in Ahmedabad, in India, doing his Bachelor of Science in mathematics, he decided to bus tables. “I quickly realised in the industry that the best way to succeed is to take care of the customer. The initial attraction I had to the industry was that it was going to get me cash, right? So I realised that if I took good care of a table of customers, they would leave me a nice tip, and that’s how it started,” he says.

As he continued to work, he began to notice other gaps in the market and as he grew in the job and studied business management, he began to see practical uses for his theoretical knowledge. A couple of jobs later, the Middle East rush got to Vadiya, and when Levant Capital bought over the rights to franchise the American pizza brand Papa Johns in the region, he invested into the project and moved from Bahrain, where he was stationed, to the UAE to grow his investment.

The lessons he’s learned along the way have obviously borne fruit; Papa Johns has gone from having 45 branches when he joined the team to 140 restaurants and counting.

And one of the chief reasons is his dedication to innovation. Just this year, the company served two new products to its customers. “We introduced a pizza called Crispy Parm Pizza. What we did was we created a thin and crispy pizza and put cheese on the bottom of the crust; you get a pizza with normal cheese on top, mozzarella and the other toppings, but also a layer of golden brown, crispy Parmesan on the bottom. And the taste was amazing; it received great reviews from our customers.

“The other innovation that we launched just two-three weeks ago is chicken shawarma pizza; we’ve developed a special shawarma seasoning. We introduced pickles as a topping. And then the master stroke was that we introduced a drizzle of toum (garlic sauce) on top. From day one, it has been selling double our estimation,” says the proud CEO.

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