Uploaded May 2026 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
*Featured in this video:* Kevin Vasconi, Chief Digital and Technical Officer at Papa Johns International
*Executive summary:* Papa Johns serves piping-hot pizza to 150 million customers around the globe, and the company puts the customer experience first when they’re making technology decisions. Papa Johns was the first quick-service restaurant (QSR) to adopt Google Cloud’s new Gemini Food Ordering AI Agent, part of their adoption of the broader Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform. The company added these capabilities on top of their existing Google Cloud data infrastructure, which includes BigQuery and CloudSQL. With the Food Ordering agent, customers get personalized recommendations and voice-powered ordering across kiosks, mobile devices, and in-car systems. Papa Johns customers are digital-savvy and want fast, simple transactions, plus real-time order tracking, which is provided by Google Maps.
*Challenge:* The QSR market is heavily digital and fast-moving, with savvy consumers looking for great service, deals, and delivery times. Without a great start-to-finish experience every time, it’s much too easy for a pizza consumer to order from a competitor. Papa Johns needed to stay ahead of what users require, as well as make team members’ and store managers’ lives easier throughout the process.
*Solution:* Papa Johns adopted Agent Platform and Gemini on top of their existing BigQuery and CloudSQL deployments to streamline and increase the use of data analytics throughout the company, and the Food Ordering agent to add natural language processing functionality and generally speed up and improve the ordering process.
*Results:* Papa Johns customers can now place “no-tap” orders with voice functionality, and the Food Ordering AI agent looks for relevant coupons by default for every order. The BigQuery back end allows for micro-segmentation to power personalized customer interactions, so the agent can offer relevant recommendations. With Agent Platform, the Papa Johns team has better identified the KPIs that drive the business, tracking conversion rates and cart abandonment for an understanding of customer satisfaction. And this powerful data infrastructure creates an ongoing feedback loop to continually improve customer experiences.
*Key takeaways and highlights from our interview with Kevin Vasconi, Chief Digital and Technical Officer at Papa Johns International:*
→ “When we looked at hyperscale partners, one of the things that was most important to us was an engineering culture and a culture of innovation, because that’s our culture.”
→ “One of the challenges we all face in the QSR industry is how do we continue to surprise and delight our customers? The technology stakes get higher every year, and in our business, being quick to market is a competitive differentiator.”
→ “There’s so much opportunity [to use AI]. When we talk about introducing any technology, the most important thing to do is to make sure that the group using the technology understands the value that it's going to add. We always start with what's in it for the consumer, what's in it for the associates in our store, and make sure that they understand why we're doing this. The best way to apply technology is to think about friction or stressors in the process.”
→ “Companies being successful have embraced this idea that quality is more than the finished product — it’s the experience. We pride ourselves on looking at every transaction as order to delivery, making sure we hit the quality mark every step of the way.”
*Google Cloud products used:* Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform, Gemini Enterprise, BigQuery, CloudSQL, Maps
*Learn more:*
→ Papa Johns and Google Cloud Reimagine the Future of Food Ordering to Better Serve Customers googlecloudpresscorner.com/2026-01-11-Papa-Johns-and-Google-Cloud-Reimagine-the-Future-of-Food-Ordering-to-Better-Serve-Customers
→ Fresh ingredients to fresh insights: An inside look at Papa John's data cloud strategy cloud.google.com/blog/products/databases/pizza-meets-cloud-as-papa-johns-modernizes-its-infrastructure
→ A new era of agentic commerce is here cloud.google.com/transform/a-new-era-agentic-commerce-retail-ai
→ AI agents built for specific use cases cloud.google.com/solutions/vertical-ai-agents
*Featured in this video:* Kevin Vasconi, Chief Digital and Technical Officer at Papa Johns International
*Executive summary:* Papa Johns serves piping-hot pizza to 150 million customers around the globe, and the company puts the customer experience first when they’re making technology decisions. Papa Johns was the first quick-service restaurant (QSR) to adopt Google Cloud’s new Gemini Food Ordering AI Agent, part of their adoption of the broader Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform. The company added these capabilities on top of their existing Google Cloud data infrastructure, which includes BigQuery and CloudSQL. With the Food Ordering agent, customers get personalized recommendations and voice-powered ordering across kiosks, mobile devices, and in-car systems. Papa Johns customers are digital-savvy and want fast, simple transactions, plus real-time order tracking, which is provided by Google Maps.
*Challenge:* The QSR market is heavily digital and fast-moving, with savvy consumers looking for great service, deals, and delivery times. Without a great start-to-finish experience every time, it’s much too easy for a pizza consumer to order from a competitor. Papa Johns needed to stay ahead of what users require, as well as make team members’ and store managers’ lives easier throughout the process.
*Solution:* Papa Johns adopted Agent Platform and Gemini on top of their existing BigQuery and CloudSQL deployments to streamline and increase the use of data analytics throughout the company, and the Food Ordering agent to add natural language processing functionality and generally speed up and improve the ordering process.
*Results:* Papa Johns customers can now place “no-tap” orders with voice functionality, and the Food Ordering AI agent looks for relevant coupons by default for every order. The BigQuery back end allows for micro-segmentation to power personalized customer interactions, so the agent can offer relevant recommendations. With Agent Platform, the Papa Johns team has better identified the KPIs that drive the business, tracking conversion rates and cart abandonment for an understanding of customer satisfaction. And this powerful data infrastructure creates an ongoing feedback loop to continually improve customer experiences.
*Key takeaways and highlights from our interview with Kevin Vasconi, Chief Digital and Technical Officer at Papa Johns International:*
→ “When we looked at hyperscale partners, one of the things that was most important to us was an engineering culture and a culture of innovation, because that’s our culture.”
→ “One of the challenges we all face in the QSR industry is how do we continue to surprise and delight our customers? The technology stakes get higher every year, and in our business, being quick to market is a competitive differentiator.”
→ “There’s so much opportunity [to use AI]. When we talk about introducing any technology, the most important thing to do is to make sure that the group using the technology understands the value that it's going to add. We always start with what's in it for the consumer, what's in it for the associates in our store, and make sure that they understand why we're doing this. The best way to apply technology is to think about friction or stressors in the process.”
→ “Companies being successful have embraced this idea that quality is more than the finished product — it’s the experience. We pride ourselves on looking at every transaction as order to delivery, making sure we hit the quality mark every step of the way.”
*Google Cloud products used:* Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform, Gemini Enterprise, BigQuery, CloudSQL, Maps
*Learn more:*
→ Papa Johns and Google Cloud Reimagine the Future of Food Ordering to Better Serve Customers googlecloudpresscorner.com/2026-01-11-Papa-Johns-and-Google-Cloud-Reimagine-the-Future-of-Food-Ordering-to-Better-Serve-Customers
→ Fresh ingredients to fresh insights: An inside look at Papa John's data cloud strategy cloud.google.com/blog/products/databases/pizza-meets-cloud-as-papa-johns-modernizes-its-infrastructure
→ A new era of agentic commerce is here cloud.google.com/transform/a-new-era-agentic-commerce-retail-ai
→ AI agents built for specific use cases cloud.google.com/solutions/vertical-ai-agents
