Catering to College Students
It’s hard to imagine anyone who doesn’t love pizza, especially college students! Pizza is a popular choice for interest group meetings, study sessions, and on-the-go eating. With an estimated 19 million students enrolled at colleges and universities across the United States, these young people make up a large customer base for pizza franchise owners to reach.
In order to make your pizza franchise an appealing choice for college students, it’s important to understand a little more about them: how they think, how they choose to spend their money on food, and what they like to eat. Let’s take a closer look at today’s college students – or, as we like to think of them, tomorrow’s loyal Hungry Howie’s customers.
Get to Know Today’s Students: Generation Z
College students break down into two groups: traditional and nontraditional students. Traditional college students are aged 18 to 24, and they’re likely to be full-time students who live on or near campus. Nontraditional college students are adults over 24, and they are often part-time students who have work and family obligations in addition to their schoolwork. For our purposes, we’re going to look at traditional college students.
College students in 2024 are members of Generation Z, often referred to as Gen Z or Zoomers. They were born between 1997 and 2012. Zoomers are digital natives and have a level of comfort with technology that older generations – even many Millennials – don’t have. They’ve also come of age in an environment where popular cooking shows, cooking content on the internet, and direct-to-consumer food brands have provided foodies with more diverse choices than ever before. As a group, Zoomers are adventurous eaters. adventurous eaters.
A 2023 survey revealed that:
- Half of Gen Z wants to have more meals with unique flavors
- 39% prefer to eat foods they’re familiar with
- 32% love to try new foods and cuisines
- 21% agree that indulgent food is an important part of a balanced diet
With those attitudes in mind, Hungry Howie’s combination of flavor innovation and classic pizza restaurant favorites make it the ideal match for Gen Z college students. In fact, according to Morning Consult, 20% of Zoomers said that their favorite food is pizza!
How We Eat Today
The pandemic changed nearly every aspect of our day-to-day lives, and that’s particularly true when it comes to how consumers interact with restaurants. During lockdowns, restaurants increased their delivery and carryout options in order to stay afloat. Customers grew accustomed to this new way of eating out, and many found that they preferred it.
Of course, pizza restaurants have been providing delivery and carryout options for over six decades. For those of us in the pizza industry, this is just how we do business, and it shows in our industry’s $41.3 billion in sales for 2023 alone.
Eating out in the 2020s is geared toward convenience. Most brands in the QSR space use technology to achieve this, whether that’s through online ordering, mobile apps, and loyalty programs or systems at the restaurants themselves to improve operational efficiency.
Hungry Howie’s does both. Our mobile app and loyalty program, Howie Rewards®, make it as simple as possible for consumers to order their favorite pizza, sandwiches, salad, and wings. Gen Z is particularly accustomed to online ordering, and if the 68% of Zoomers who prefer to shop for groceries online are any indication, they prefer this to in-person transactions.
By offering benefits through the Howie Rewards loyalty program, Hungry Howie’s encourages repeat visits – which can come in handy when their rewards mean dinner can be a hot, flavorful pizza instead of another trip to the dining hall.
Brand Loyalty for Life
College students are at the beginning of their lives as consumers. Through our digital-first business approach, rewards program, and bold flavors, Hungry Howie’s is uniquely positioned to not only win the loyalty of college students, but also to retain it as they get older. Taking the time to better understand Generation Z is an investment in the future of your franchise – and the future of our brand.
