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Back in 1995, when most of the world was just learning the ins and outs of e-mail, Sandra Bullock’s Angela Bennett was ordering pizza online in the opening moments of the Web-based thriller “The Net.”

Sitting in the theater, that seemed like an implausibility, even when her modem-happy character is shown chowing down in front of her monitor minutes later.

These days, though, online ordering is becoming increasingly popular, and companies like Papa John’s are reaping the rewards. Earlier this month, the nation’s third-largest pizza chain hit $1 billion in sales online, seven years after launching its the online ordering program.

Ivan Albers, general manager of the Lawrence Papa John’s, 918 Miss., says that being in a town with a Web-savvy population has allowed about 25 percent of the restaurant’s sales to come in online.

“We ... send hundreds of pizzas out because of the Internet,” Albers says. “I think it definitely helps, it helps get more business in. I think that pizza places that don’t have online probably, you know, don’t reap the benefits of it.”

Caught in the Web

Other companies with less-established online services definitely do want their piece of the pie. Of the 18 restaurants in Lawrence that serve mainly pizza, eight of them have online ordering capabilities. Other restaurants, including Jimmy John’s Gourmet Sandwiches and Chipotle Mexican Grill, also offer some level of online ordering service.

But most of those restaurants don’t see the volume of online orders that Albers sees at his store.

Seth Mowe, general manager of Pizza Hut, 934 Mass., says that “on a good day” 5 to 7 percent of the restaurant orders come in online. At Wheat State Pizza, 711 W. 23rd St., store manager Joe Scholz says his online orders amount to “just at couple to a dozen a day.” And Bill Longmire, owner of Pizza Shuttle, 1601 W. 23rd, says “about 99.8 percent” of the restaurant’s orders are taken over the phone.

“The Wall Street Journal said that Papa John’s and Pizza Hut, their online ordering was tremendous. We don’t really see that,” Longmire says. “Not to say that they’re wrong — I don’t doubt that they’re right — but our Web site is relatively inactive. It’s been up for quite some time. We really don’t see a tremendous input. That is not to say that we’re not going to begin pushing it, you know, we have not tried to drive sales through our Web site.”

Troubleshooting

No matter how many are coming in, Web-based orders can have their drawbacks. Most smaller companies don’t have a slick online ordering system like Papa John’s. Whereas Albers says online orders free up the phone and just pop up in the computer system, “just like if we had taken the order over the phone,” other companies have a much less user-friendly system in place.

Ben Manley, general manager of Jimmy John’s, 922 Mass., says that in the world of sandwiches, an order is much easier to take over the phone than spit out of a fax — that’s how the store gets its online catering orders. An online order goes from the customer to a corporate office, and then the office faxes the order to the appropriate store. The system takes the ease out of ordering, Manley says.

“It’s easier to write a delivery ticket out manually than it is to receive a fax,” Manley says. “It’s 10 times easier to do anything over the phone at Jimmy John’s than it is to do it online.”

Also getting orders through the fax is Scholz of Wheat State Pizza. He doesn’t mind the hassle, though, as he believes it is helping Wheat State find new customers.

“The order that the customer puts in goes to another party and then they fax it to our store and then we have to enter it ourselves by hand,” Scholz says. “So it’s not that convenient at this point but it is getting us some new customers, I’m pretty sure.”

Jobs vs. computers?

Longmire, the owner of Pizza Shuttle, says that a few new customers are not worth the number of jobs he says are destroyed by online ordering. From a business point of view, fewer employees to pay, thanks to an automated system, can mean more profit, but Longmire sees it as just hurting the people of Lawrence.

“We have 50 employees that work here,” Longmire says. “We probably have 15 to 20 that would qualify as full-time. And if we began driving sales exclusively through Internet, we could probably reduce our head count by 20 percent. But we would also reduce the number of people that lived in Lawrence, that worked in Lawrence, paid money in Lawrence by 20 percent. And many of those kids are students, so do we want to do that? No. And that’s one of the reasons we have not rushed to drive sales to it. Because in the end, it doesn’t increase your sales, it really doesn’t. Nobody increased their sales as a result of the Internet, all they do is decrease their cost.”

Albers says that any jobs lost because of Papa John’s popular online ordering program have been replaced with jobs running the online ordering system.

Longmire says that’s not enough for him. He’d rather keep his employees in house than employ others elsewhere.

Says Longmire: “We would prefer to keep our head count higher and have people and employees rather than you know, just (using) a computer.”