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PBD Podcast Episode 184. In this episode, Patrick Bet-David is joined by Papa Johns Founder John H Schnatter and Adam Sosnick.
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Patrick Bet-David is the founder and CEO of Valuetainment Media. He is the author of the #1 Wall Street Journal bestseller Your Next Five Moves (Simon & Schuster) and a father of 2 boys and 2 girls. He currently resides in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.
Why would you pet on Joliet when we got pet taved?
Value payment, giving values contagious.
This world of entrepreneurs, we can't no value to hate it.
I'd be running, homie, look what I become.
I'm the one.
Podcast is late.
I'm fired up.
Okay.
We never do podcasts this late.
Folks, episode number 184 with the founder of Papa John's Pizza.
Papa John Schnatter is in the house here with us.
It's great to have you on the podcast.
Thank you, Patrick.
Thank you, Adam.
Yes, we got a special project we're going to be doing today.
We got a lot of things to cover with you guys today.
One of the things I asked him if he'd be open to, and I literally, we just told him a few minutes ago, I said, would you open to this idea of we in a minute, probably in about 30 minutes, so stick around.
We're going to order pizza from four places local, different names, all big names, including Papa John.
And we're going to order the works and we're going to order the pepperoni, I believe is what we're going to be doing.
Okay.
And we're going to time to see who shows up the fastest.
And at the same time, we're going to have take a bite or the look, what it looks like, and we'll have it on the camera.
You'll be able to judge it.
A person that's been in this, you were a founder of Papa John.
It's not like you got hired or you're a CEO.
You're the founder.
And you're going to give your feedback on.
Now, is Papa John going to do a blind taste test and see what he thinks?
I think we throw a little mask on.
You tell us what the best is.
Can you recognize?
I feel like we can have some fun.
We're going to do this in about a half hour.
I think in about 30 minutes or so.
Stick around, guys.
Yeah, definitely stick around.
And then we got a lot of things to cover.
Obviously, the controversial story with you, I want the audience to hear about it on what happened on the recording with the laundry, the marketing agency, all that stuff on how that happened, where you're everywhere.
Every time we turn on the TV, you're looking at an ad, you're watching NFL, you're everywhere.
Montana, manny, you are literally everywhere to all of a sudden, boom, after what happened with Colin Kaepernick and annealing and the commentary and a recording that came out and the story afterwards where not a lot of people have seen the story afterwards, what happened with the recording of the agency came back out.
And that's the part that I think it's good for them to know as well.
And then look, the reality of it is, you can love him or hate him.
He went from zero to being a billionaire and he had a Camaro, which he sold when he was younger to support his dad's business.
And eventually years later, he went and found the person that he sold the Camaro to who had already sold it.
And they eventually found somebody that had the Camaro.
I think you bought the Camaro for $25,000.
And the person you sold the Camaro to to help you find a person, you gave them $25,000 and you made it a Camaro Day.
And everybody that drove a Camaro got free pizza for the day or something like that.
I heard it was $250,000.
Yeah, $250,000 to the guy he bought it.
Right.
$25,000 to the person that shit.
As a finder's fee?
Right.
That found the other one.
Yeah, exactly.
Papa John in the house.
Let's go.
All right.
So for folks that don't know, if you don't mind, take a quick minute and give your background on upbringing, how Papa John's got started and how it ended up turning into a multi-billion dollar company.
Well, I think my two really heroes were my dad and my grandfather.
My dad was a serial entrepreneur, had probably 9 or 10, 11 businesses, and every single one failed.
So we had these bankruptcies, these financial issues all around the house.
And my grandfather, who was more conservative, he had three businesses in a law firm and they all prospered.
And so, how blessed was I to have the dichotomy of being in a family that's literally broke, a year behind on the house payments, turn off electricity, turn off the gas to over here where everything's paid for and it's safe and it's prosperous.
And he gets a new Cadillac and a new car and a new house.
So it was that dichotomy that take the risk.
You know, you got to, if you're an entrepreneur, which I am by spirit, take the risk.
But if you make that risk, you take that bet, you better make it good.
So you saw them on 11 businesses with your dad, as well as your grandpa.
At what point did you say, look, my dad built 11, constantly struggling, didn't happen.
You know, maybe I don't want to start a business.
Maybe I should just go be a safer job.
Maybe I should go do completely something.
Maybe I'm going to be a salesperson.
What made you say, even though you saw all the struggles with your dad, I'm still going to start a business?
I didn't know.
I had a grass-cutting business when I was eight, nine years old.
I had a paint of gutters when I was 11 or 12, a little paint company that my grandfather and I started.
Worked through high school, worked through college, had Central Solar, helped with my dad, various companies, but really didn't know I was an entrepreneur.
And I got back from graduating college at Ball State and I couldn't find a job.
And my father had a bar that was bankrupt, 50 Cent beer joint, Mixed Lounge, rough, bikers, fights every night.
Everybody's drunk.
Legit.
Legit.
You're going to get in a fight every night.
Mixed lounge.
And John, this is in Indiana.
Is that where you grew up?
Indiana in 1983.
He's going bankrupt.
He's $64,000 in debt, selling 50 cent beers.
Want to know if I'd come in and help him?
And we're not 10 days into this thing.
And I said, Dad, I don't, he thought he was $10,000 in debt.
I don't think you're $10,000 in that.
I think you're 20, 25.
Now, I ended up being 64.
And he said, well, and you were 16 at this time?
I'm 21.
Okay, got it.
I'm 21.
Gotcha.
Got it.
83.
I'm 21.
And I said, no, Dad, I think I can do this.
And he said, there's no way just he was an attorney, he was prosecutor, youngest city judge.
Please just help my reputation.
Do what you can do and just let the thing go under.
And I said, no, Dad, I think I can really do this.
I can fix this.
Now, that was 10 days in.
It just was like, I made good grades in school, pretty good athlete, but I worked harder than the other kids.
I mean, I always had to do things a little bit.
This running the business was like falling out of this chair.
It was the most natural.
Make the beer cold, have good people serving it, smile, clean the place up, make sure the McBurger's hot and have a pool tournament on Sunday, a Euchre tournament on Tuesday, Little Kings on Thursday.
But it was the most intuitive things.
And we're $64,000 in bankruptcy Labor Day weekend of 83.
I sell the car for $2,800 in October of 83.
We paid off $32,000 by January 1st of 84.
And Clark County State Bank loaned me the other 32 grand.
In less than four months, we went from bankruptcy to solve it.
Wow.
Yeah.
It was just a, it was just, it was my gift.
That gave you confidence.
They gave you a little bit of confidence where maybe I can operate a business.
I was confident.
Got it.
So your struggle wasn't being confident.
It was when I went in.
It was before I went in, but after I went in, it was like, okay, I can run a business.
And your dad just couldn't figure it out, but you could at 21.
And he was a grown man, judge, lawyer, and he just couldn't operate a business, but you came in at 21, hot shot, and figured it out.
How did that work?
Yeah, dad was just, he was happy-go-lucky.
He loved the racetrack.
He believed in absentee ownership.
He thought the thing would run itself.
Whereas Papa was save every nickel.
You know, a penny saved is a penny earned.
You have to be there.
You have to tend to the shop.
But entrepreneurship runs on all four sides of the grandparents, all four.
So entrepreneurship was in the blood.
I just didn't know it.
That was your original question.
When did you know it?
I didn't until I got thrown in the lion's den in a pork chop suit and survived.
So you pay, you help, now you're solvent.
At what point do you leave and say, I'm going to go do it on my own?
We're December January, 83, 84.
And my dad had a joke.
John gets him drunk at night, and I get him divorced in the morning because he was attorney.
I hated great business model.
I hated the bar business.
I hated the drinking, the smoking, the fights.
You're really doing something that's a negative impact on human beings, which is part of my soul that I just totally disagree with.
And I had this idea for a pizza place when I was up in Muncie, Indiana, because I'd made pizzas at Rocky's subpub and also made pizzas under Chris Karamasini, the Greek, at Greet's Pizzeria.
So I had all the recipes and the design of the place and the logo.
And I think it was March, February, March, I go, I know what I'm going to do.
I'm going to bust that broom closet down that wall, and I'm going to put me some used restaurant equipment in there.
And I'm going to take that box with the recipes and the logo.
And we're going to do $5 pizzas out the back and 50 cent beers out the front with a 50 cent game of pool.
That was our business model.
$5 pizza, 50 cent beer, and 50 cent game of pool.
50 cent game of pool.
And we got the pool tables up to $1,000 a week.
I used to go in the bank where they had a machine.
$1,000.
It's 2,000 games.
In quarters.
In quarters in each hand.
The girl behind the counter, the bank's teller, was kind of cute.
And I'd walk in with $300 worth.
And sounds like how a regular would pay me in quarters.
And then we're doing three grand a week in pizza sales at the broom closet.
And we're doing $7,000 a week selling 50-cent beers.
We're knocking down $124,000 a year, selling $5 pizza and 50-cent game of pool and 50-cent beers in 1984.
Wow.
So at this point, have you made pizza before?
Is this your first time?
That's all I've done.
That's all I've done.
I made pizzas when I was because we were talking outside.
I was a dishwasher at Rocky's, $2.35 an hour, 1977, 78.
$235 a day.
That was minimum wage.
And I hated washing dishes.
And right across from our wash dishes is where Joe Fondrese made pizzas.
And the Fondrese brothers, Joe, John, and Frank, ran Rocky's subpub.
And I always dreamed of getting promoted from washing dishes to making pizza.
And they got it right up in the Saturday scene in Louisville.
Joe Fondrese went to the front of the house to host us.
And John Snyder, Papa John, got promoted from washing dishes to making pizza.
And I fell in love with it.
I loved everything about it.
So how much different was the pizza that you were learning from them versus how you adjusted it to your style?
What I did is I went around and stole everybody's best ideas.
I went to Gaddy's.
They did some things with the cheese.
Chris Karamasini, the Greek, he had a little sweetness in the sauce, a little sugar that I wanted to increase the acid-sugar ratio with our vine ripened tomatoes at Papa John's to make it a little sweeter.
Another thing I learned at Greeks, we do 8,000 a week in pizza sales and Rocky's.
We do 8,000 a day at Greeks because it was college.
So Greeks taught me the sauce and the processes for high volume.
They had a bakery in town, Crawl's Bakery.
We used to study what they did with the crust.
Domino's went over and took a lot of their systems away from I was employee dominoes.
We just went around everywhere.
I flipped hamburgers at Wendy's in 1980.
So we just went around and stole everybody's best apples.
What did you learn from Domino's and Wendy's?
What'd you pick up from them?
Domino's systems are and were incredible.
They just had processes where the efficiency of getting that order, getting it made, getting the oven, and getting out the door were second to none.
What was the second?
Wendy.
Wendy's what I learned in Wendy's.
I don't like grease.
The grease coming off those hamburgers gets in your face and your hair.
You go work at a Wendy's old-fashioned hamburger and you'll kiss the kitchen floor of a pizza giant, a Papa John's, because the flour, who cares about flour, but grease.
So what I learned from R. David, who learned from Colonel Sanders, was quality.
You know, quality is our recipe.
And we used to patty the beef in the back of the store.
And R. David Thomas was a fanatic about quality.
And we had him speak a couple of times at our convention.
He was a really, he was a simple guy, wasn't a big talker, didn't use big words.
But you always knew where he stood with him.
And of course, Colonel Sanders is 15 miles down the road from where I grew up.
All these guys early on, Jim Patterson, Sanders.
Did you meet with all of them at that time?
I didn't meet the Colonel.
I met Patterson.
Got it.
Horse Ken Taylor with Roadhouse, Jim Patterson.
Who had the most impressive personality?
Like, who did you meet and say, this is an impressive person here?
In the food business?
In the food business, yeah.
Patterson.
Patterson did the only one of any of us that's done multiple.
Patterson did Long John Silver's.
He did Wendy's.
He did Chi Chi's.
He did Rowley's hamburgers.
He did Fudruckers.
He's the only one of us that really, Ken Taylor, you could say, who just passed away this past year with Texas Roadhouse, he did Bubba's and Jaggers.
He did a couple, but they haven't really grown to anything big yet.
But I mean, Colonel Sanders was kind of, you know, chicken.
R. David Thomas was a franchisee for KFC and then became Wendy's.
And then, of course, the only thing I've done is Papa John's and a few other things, the bar.
But Patterson was the one guy that was multifaceted in his ability to do more than one concept.
You know, Dave Thomas, the late Dave Thomas and Ray Kroc lived in the same community here in Fort Lauderdale.
Did not know that.
Yeah, before they passed away.
Both of them lived here.
I'm glad you went.
Kroc's my hero.
Yeah.
Ray Kroc.
Behind the arches, John Love.
Great book.
Kroc's the guy that figured it out.
If that franchisee doesn't make money, then the mothership is worthless.
I mean, he looked at everything from a franchisee perspective.
He used to charge the franchisees like a half percent royalty.
Wouldn't even cover his overhead on supervising it.
And it wasn't until Harry Stewborn came along in, I think, late 70s and the 80s and came up with a real estate play where we'll, you know, we'll buy the land, build the building, take 10% of the money.
He was the business guy.
Harry Stewborn was the guy that figured out the economics.
Ray was a salesperson.
He was the visioner.
He was the guy that said, we can turn this into something big.
He was a multi-mixer.
He was a milkshake blender salesman, for God's sake, when he met him.
You're saying Ray Kroc?
Ray Kroc.
You must have loved that movie, The Founder with Michael Keaton.
How many times have you seen that movie?
I've seen it a couple times.
I don't think it really embraces what Kroc was all about.
I mean, he lost all his friends at his country club because they wouldn't live up to his QSC and V. He was fanatical about quality, service, and cleanliness and value.
And a character, you know, I mean, he liked to have a good time.
But Kroc, his, I mean, remember, Kroc, McDonald's, what, 1955, 1960?
Hell, Burger Chef had been around 20, 30 years.
White Castle had been around 20, 30, 40 years.
A Burger King, Burger Queen, all these concepts were way before McDonald's.
And yet he came 20, 30, 40 years, check my mouth.
Burger King came out before McDonald's.
I know Burger Chef did.
But check.
You say McDonald's wasn't the OG that we think it is as today.
We think that's the original McDonald's, you know, a hamburger joint.
By the way, he's right.
Burger King came out before McDonald's.
Wow.
I didn't even know that.
Did you know that?
No.
I had no idea.
McDonald's was late to the party, and Kroc still kicked all the I love that.
Yeah, he kicked the buttons.
You kind of relate to that?
Do you kind of relate to the fact that pizza, a lot of these guys have been around for a while and you came out and well, the thing we're most proud of is our team, you know, our people and our product and our team.
But remember, in our category, there's some 40,000 independent pizzerias.
So when I came along, you had Domino's, Little Caesars, and Pizza.
You had the three big players.
Now, all 40,000 independent pizzerias are wired like us.
They want to be John.
They want to get through that window of opportunity.
And out of the 40,000, we've been the only one that can come out of that horse race and get to the top four.
We did it.
And that's just because of great team effort and great product.
And I got to tell you, we leaned on the book Behind the Arches by John Love pretty hard.
Did you ever meet Ray or no?
Nope.
I've been up to Oak Brook three or four years.
University.
They go through the museum.
I mean, the office up there actually has a McDonald's in it with a pub because he liked to drink beer after the day was over.
But, you know, your quality is only as good as your consistency.
Very systematic guy.
Everything was about system with him.
Everything.
And I don't know when it was.
One time, McDonald's tested out creating a pineapple burger.
I don't know if you remember that story.
So one guy came out and said, let's sell a pineapple burger.
You know how long it lasted?
Apparently, it lasted like a couple days.
People hated it.
Yeah, it's probably not a good idea.
So they would test some of the products.
It would come out and then boom.
Ray one time said 90% of the best ideas that we got at McDonald's came from bottom up.
Would you agree with that?
Like, was that also cultural with you guys where a lot of your operators would say, hey, John, what if we do this?
And what if we test this?
And what if we do that?
Well, I think you always got to look for new and better ways.
The McRib sandwich was a franchisee of idea.
The Egg McMuffin was a franchisee of McDonald's.
But I'm sure forever, one or two great ideas.
They may probably have a thousand bad.
But when you start running your business from the C-suite and you're not out with the franchisee, store level, the suppliers, if you're not out looking on what's going on in the real world and learning, then you're not going to innovate and get better.
Y'all just ordered some pizzas from Jets and Papa John's when I walked in and the driver of Papa John's hadn't busted me yet.
And I asked the guy, I said, hey, is pizza any good at Papa John's?
He goes, no, not really.
And I was like, Floyd.
He has no clue who you are yet.
Well, he did after about three or four minutes.
But I go, hey, imagine how funny.
That's hilarious.
And I go, really?
He goes, yeah, it's not too good.
So do you eat it?
He goes, I don't eat it.
But I'm like, you know, three or four years ago, a driver would have never said our product is something he wouldn't pride at home.
A driver saying.
Driver of Papa John's just told me in the lobby, he says, you know, not very good pizza.
So I got to tell you this.
So for me, here's my Papa John.
Here's my Papa John's experience.
Are you a pizza guy?
Like, do you have one that you order?
Like, by the way, if you're listening to this, just out of curiosity, what's your pizza like?
If you're going to watch a game on Sunday, if you're going to order pizza for your kids or yourself or your family, what are you ordering?
What's your number one place you go to?
What's yours?
I mean, I don't want to go too long on this story.
I had a pizza place in South Peach called Pizza Roostica.
And when I was going in my heyday and partying and nightlife in South Beach with Keith, I would go out.
I had no money in my name.
I would go out, I had $5 in my pocket, and I would go out and party in South Beach.
Knew all the bartenders and the owners and the clubs and the promoters.
I would go out and you're going to shock you.
Get wasted for free.
Have fun.
Great times at South Beach.
I'd spend $5 at the end of the night on a slice of pizza.
And then I ballooned up to about 235 pounds, the biggest I've ever been.
You have pictures?
I burnt them all.
If anybody is afraid of Adam and you have those pictures, DM me right now.
I'm going to share it with the audience.
I just want to see anybody.
235 is what we're looking for.
Not 232.
No, anyone in South July.
Let me tell you my Papa John's story.
So here's what happened with me.
So I'm in the Army.
We lived in Van Nuys down the street from Basit, a Little Caesars.
I was a Little Caesars guy in the 90s.
So if I'm in Van Nuys with my dad, hey, dad, let's order some Little Caesars.
We go down the street, pick it up, and boom, come back.
$5 hot and ready.
And they had the Little Caesars.
What was it?
Bread?
That's something that was.
Yeah, it was great.
Anyway, so I go into the Army and I'm in South Carolina.
Okay.
And then we go to Fort Campbell, Kentucky.
I'm in Fort Campbell, Kentucky.
I said, guys, let's order pizza.
I said, yeah.
Perfect.
Let's order Papa John's.
I said, is that a local place?
No, everybody eats Papa John's.
I've never heard of Papa John's.
He said, what are Tacoma?
I'm in California.
I've never heard of Papa John's.
He says, dude, it's the best pizza.
I said, Papa John's?
Yeah, I'm not ordering Papa John's.
Is there Little Caesars?
Dude, just try Papa John's.
So they bring Papa John's.
This is September of 97.
You remember the day?
I tell you, I can tell you this because it's like when you go boot camp in AIT for six months and you don't eat pizza, the first time you eat pizza, it's like a 16-year-old boy for his first time experiences, you know, the magic of, you know, what you call some crazy bread.
Some crazy bread.
Yeah.
So anyway, so I eat this Papa John's pizza, but what got me hooked wasn't the pizza.
John, when I dipped that pizza into that garlic sauce that you have, came over for me.
I said, this is since September of 97 until today.
Dylan will tell you.
You call my family right now and ask, what's daddy's pizza?
They'll tell you, Papa John's, just because of that sauce from September of 1997.
Whose idea was a garlic sauce?
Well, the two little add-ons we give to the consumer to say thanks are the pepperoncini and the garlic sauce.
Pepperon chinis came from the Fondrisi Brothers at Rockies.
And that was just a nice little touch they did.
The garlic sauce came from a local independent pizzeria in New Albany, which was two towns over.
And the problem with that garlic sauce is that at Mixed Lounge next to the broom closet operation, we could mount that, we could melt that margarine, put the salt and the garlic in there, fill up these little cups, and then put it out with every pizza because we're only selling, you know, five, six pizzas a day.
Well, we started getting busier, and this garlic sauce issues a real problem because the garlic sauce is getting everywhere.
And we couldn't figure out how to pour it in.
So we went down to the local funeral home because that garlic sauce will eat through rubber hoses.
We used to get the hose from Hoosier Hardware, a little mama shop, a hardware shop in downtown Jeff on Spring.
Went to Coote's funeral home and the fluid that you get out of the body, that garlic sauce won't tear that tube up.
So we put a five-gallon bucket up there with that tube that they use for dead bodies.
And we'd fill up these garlic sauces and we'd line all the cups up.
Well, that worked until we got up to, you know, 30, 40 pizzas a day.
And then that sauce was going everywhere.
And so store number three, we got rid of the garlic sauce.
We said, that's it.
We don't want to do it.
It's too big of a mess.
Plus, it's expensive.
Customers raised cane.
They went up.
They went people.
And so we had to put it back in.
How do we line up?
Yeah.
That garlic, I figure we sell, you know, 200 million plus pizzas a year at garlic sauce.
It's got to be nine to 10 cents a cup.
So pick a number, 15 to 30 million dollars.
And it's expensive to do.
But we finally found a manufacturer that could figure out how to get that lid to stick on that cup without that garlic sauce going everywhere.
Yeah, I mean, listen, when that sauce is there, if they order, if they deliver the pizza, I will chase the guy down.
And I'll say, I'm not taking a pizza until you bring that.
And I want it to be hot, so they'll go back and get it.
They've never not had the garlic sauce as a pizza.
Yeah, of course they have.
They showed up in Plano two years ago.
I ordered, I'm like, listen, I order pizza once every other month.
If I do it, I'm doing Papa Johnson, I want to enjoy it.
I want it to be thick, cheesy, just fat is what I want to have.
I'm going to have a couple of these slices, right?
Thick.
I want it to be thick.
So, anyways, one time a guy forgot about it.
I said, no, no, take this back.
I want it hot and I want it to be this.
Anyways, by the way, for those of you guys that just tuned in, here's what we're going to be doing.
Stick around.
In a minute, we're going to have four of our team members come in here.
Each of them is going to call a pizza joint locally here.
And they're going to call and order two pizzas.
Okay.
And we're going to see how long it's going to take from the moment they order to deliver it.
And then we're going to have Papa John right here judge all the pizza by the looks, by the box, by the taste, by the flavor.
And then we're going to see what's going to happen.
So do not share this video with any of the local pizza shops.
Matter of fact, let's give a location of where we are right now.
This podcast is right now being done from Vero Beach.
So if you guys want to call the people in Vero Beach, we're going to confuse you a little bit.
We're not in Muncie, Indiana.
We're in Muncie, Indiana.
Yeah, we're in Muncie, Indiana.
So, okay.
So at what point when you start Papa John's, okay, and I think it's 84.
If I'm not mistaken, I think you start in 84, right?
You start in 84.
At what point when you started it?
And it starts going through what it's going through.
When did you say, boys, team, gang, we got something going on here?
You know, something's taking place.
When did you realize you have something special?
The psychology on this is fascinating.
At store number one, we go from the broom closet to actually open in a restaurant.
Broom closet, as I told you, is doing $3,000 a week.
We put a store next door to the bar.
It's a freestanding store.
And we put a sign on the door.
Volume tripled.
We go from three grand to nine grand.
And we're like, we didn't know anything about marketing.
We just thought if you had the best pizza, you'd win.
Wait, wait.
So you put what sign?
We just put a Papa John sign.
We didn't have a sign on the broom closet.
We passed out a brochure and say in the back of Mix Lounge, we didn't have any sign on the front door.
We didn't understand that if you put a sign on the front door, sales are going to go up.
Sales triple.
Now we got the bar doing seven grand a week.
Pool table's doing a thousand.
And Papa John's next door is doing $9,000 a week.
We're off to the races.
I'm all pumped.
I'm, you know, I'm ready to go.
I'm excited.
We go down to Domino's, which is about three miles down the road in Grants Plaza.
I walk in there.
I'm, you know, I'm 22 years old.
Sure.
We're doing 9,000.
I said, what are you doing a week?
You know, he said, we're doing 6,000 a week.
And I just basically looked at the guy and I said, we're going to kick your ass in the whole world.
You said that.
Basically.
22 years old.
How I thought with one store, because we were whooping them in Jefferson, Indiana, we were going to beat them.
But I thought that way, which is crazy.
Most people would be like, I was scared.
I was like, no, if you can beat them one place, why shouldn't you beat them in the whole world?
Then let's fast forward to 2000.
We got like 1,800, 1,900 stores.
We're making, you know, 70, 80 million bucks a year.
And I'm going through people like shit through a goose.
You know, I mean, I'm, because I mean, I'm not, I'm relentless.
You know, I like the tenacity, the perfection.
I'm on it.
And we turned the corner.
We're making 70 million bucks a year.
But in my mind, we were still broke.
I was still back when dad's businesses were going under and they were turning off the water, turning off the gas, a year behind on the house payment.
So mentally, I still think we're broke, even though we're not.
So I got a hired coach.
I'm still working with guys like the greatest, one of the greatest guys and the greatest coaches in the world, Tony Robbins, who gives me advice.
And so I've always had great coaches along the way.
So I got this coach in 99.
We're going through this.
In 99, it's Tony.
It wasn't Tony yet.
If it was Tony, I would have the issues I had.
But I'm literally like, it's my way, the highway.
If you didn't do it my way, you know, I was bad.
It was a bedevolent dictator with an attitude.
So 99, 84, you're a 62 baby, 22.
You're 37 years old, give or take.
37, 38 years old.
37 years old.
Okay.
At this point, are you wealthy?
Yeah, we're worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Okay, so at this point, you're.
Yeah, I'm set.
I'm sorry.
But I didn't, I didn't, it's still, you asked, store number one, I thought we were invincible.
We're going to beat Domino's in the whole world.
Here we're at store 1800 worth, the company's probably worth a billion dollars.
And I think I'm still broke.
I mean, you know, because you're just, you know, you're that.
That's the right mindset, though.
If you want a little bit of that, but you don't want to be, Dennis Rodman operates out of the state of fear.
Jack Nicholas, Tiger Woods operate out of the state of self-esteem, of pop.
You want to operate, you want a little bit of fear.
You don't want to be complacent, but you don't want to be that running the show.
You want solid sense of self-running the show.
So I got this coach, and this guy's tough, but I didn't care because, you know, and so he says, looks at me, he says, you're worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
I go, yeah.
He goes, Vietnam's over.
I said, what do you mean?
He goes, Vietnam's over, bud.
I said, they're not going to turn off your electricity.
They're not going to turn off your water.
You're not going to lose your house payment.
You're not going to lose your house.
Vietnam's over.
You need to wake up.
And it stuck.
It's like, shit.
Was that good counsel?
I was a good counsel.
Vietnam's been over since 1999.
So meaning, in other words, let me interpret that to see if that, if I'm, if I'm processing this properly, you stayed in wartime leader mentality for too long rather than learning how to be a peacetime leader since war was already done and you can figure out better things you need to do to take the company to the next level.
Is that kind of what you're saying?
I think I learned that you can operate from the worst in you, a fear, or you can operate from the best in you.
His words would have been a dictator versus a statesman.
You know, combative, collusive versus complicated.
I want to know who is this guy a name guy or no?
Is he a well-known guy?
No, no, he's not a war guy.
Was he an author or no?
I don't know if he had a book or not.
I think he's got a book.
Okay, cool.
Cool.
So he's giving you that mindset.
So did it hit you and did you receive it or were you still fighting it when he told you that?
Were you like, I don't know what I did?
No, it just, it was the finally the button clicked.
It just clicked that, okay, you got store 1800.
Nothing wrong with going to store 3000.
You make a great product.
You've made your point.
Now just keep, it just went from they're going to turn off electricity.
I'm going to lose the house to look what I can do to humanity with all this resources and good.
What it really changed was the culture where we always had a culture of integrity, quality, authenticity, win-win.
We always had that in place.
But we started to really obey natural law and natural principles.
In fact, our GOLF program was based on principles, universal law of mutual respect, kindness, thoughtfulness, win-wins, compassion.
We really changed the company from kind of a transaction-based company to more of a people transformation company.
And that happened in that 01, 05 time period because that's when John changed.
And that was the most fun I ever had was really coming back in 08, 09 till 16 and 17.
That was the funnest run.
That was, see, from 84 to 93 was survival.
Just survival.
I mean, biological.
You know, you eat what you need.
Nine, 10 years of just trying to survive.
Just trying to survive.
What's your schedule like during that time?
What are you doing?
Oh, you're working.
You're working 12 to 14 hours, six days a week, and you're working a half a day on Sunday.
We did take a half a day.
We would cut out a one or two on Sunday.
By the way, that's from a CEO founder who also had a similar struggle story.
That's like the kind of mindset you're like, all right, how many hours have you even sleeping?
By the way, this is why some people hate capitalism.
Because who the hell in the right mind is willing to listen to this message and say, you want me to go 12 to 14 hours a day, six days a week, and half day on Sunday for 10 years?
Now, I'm good, bro.
Totally get it.
But there's a reason why the man sitting here is a billionaire.
It's not easy to do that.
It's very, very lonely and it's hard.
So, okay.
So 84.95 is survival.
Your loan now.
93, we go public.
We go from where we can't hardly get $3 million loan from National City Bank in Kentucky, Louisville, Kentucky, $3 million.
What was your EBITDA when you went public?
Do you remember?
Like 30.
I mean, it was a good EBITDA to where the company's worth $200 million.
I think it was June 26th of 93.
We go from where I didn't have $5,000 to go on vacation with family to now I'm worth $100 million one day.
But I still felt broke until we really turned on the measurement system and the new culture in 03, 04.
I didn't, we were successful.
We made a lot of money.
We took the stock from $13 a share.
If you look at pre-spit, pre-split, probably $130.
10x.
It was, yeah, easy, maybe even more.
I don't know how many times we split the stock so many times.
But it was from the fear of failure back to the 99, 2000 story.
It was like I was doing it because I was worried about going broke.
So 20 years you're going with this feeling.
What was the first night you slept where you slept?
So 84, you're doing this.
You're starting it.
When did you really sleep?
Because there's a difference between sleeping and sleeping.
I think.
You know what I'm asking.
I think 99, 2000 was where I really kind of went, okay, I can get a good night's.
I think that, yeah, I mean, I definitely slept better.
This is where I got to interject here for a second.
You're saying for 15 years, you didn't even sleep.
No, not didn't sleep.
That's not the same thing.
No, no, I didn't say not sleep.
I said sleep good.
He said this was the first time that he really got a good night's sleep.
This goes back to your point.
But I don't know what it is to sleep with that level of fear and paranoia and someone's after and what if we go out of business.
It's a different kind of thing.
That's what I'm asking.
That's what I want to tap into.
I understand that nature.
And by the way, here's the crazy thing.
Even after you get the $100, $200, $300 million in the bank, because you've been in that state for so long, you still don't know how to snap out of that state.
At least that's my experience yourself.
16 years.
Well, we measure the sleep every night, so I'll probably know more about sleep today.
Oh, yeah, but the ore rings.
I love it.
If you read the book Why We Sleep, all you can do is read the first page.
The amount of things that happen when you sleep as far as repair, I'd say I slept, but really not in when you're in a state of fear, you're in the reptilian part of the brain.
You know, it's we call it a brain regression, flight or fight.
And you know, you're your repair to your body is done in the New York cortex, the frontal lobe of your body.
And I think good night's sleep is more about getting in the frontal lobe of don't think that if you don't spend the world, the world ain't going to spend.
A position of, okay, I'm in this for everybody to win.
I'm in this for the better of humanity.
I'm in this to better my community.
I'm in this because we're proud of what we serve.
I mean, there's a higher level of consciousness that come when you operate from a position of compassion, thoughtfulness than when you're operating because you're afraid you're going to get broke and you're counting your money every day.
So, by the way, if you're watching this right now, in a few minutes, we're going to call four different pizzas and we're going to order two pizzas.
It's going to come in here.
We're going to time to see who delivers on time.
And Papa John's going to give us some feedback on this pizza, how it tastes, how it looks, the design of the whole nine.
And we'll do that once the live hits the number 35, which we're getting very close to.
You hit that, give it a thumbs up if you're enjoying this podcast so far.
Subscribe to the channel, but I want to go back to this year.
So, okay, at this point, just to put things into perspective, 2000, so 84, 16 years, you talked to this man in 99, 16th year, you're able to get some rest.
You're enjoying yourself a little bit more now.
So, are you kind of sitting back and saying, I've been working in the business so much, let me see about working on the business.
Where do we want to go next?
Is that kind of what happens next?
Not exactly.
Remember, Christ had 12 disciples to preach the gospel.
And up till about 88, 89, there were 10, 12 of us that we could get out and preach the gospel of what Papa John's was all about.
Remember, we talked about Kroc Sanders.
There's a culture, a methodology, a process, idiosyncrasies, and every kind of brand that are intuitive, instinctive that you have to learn.
We got about 17, 1,800 restaurants in 97, 98, and we lost our quality.
There's simply too many restaurants to go out there and check on that we did it.
And so, while we started getting John and head screwed on, we started moving things from a culture perspective pretty positive, our product quality had suffered.
And this would have been really the second time that the product quality had gotten away from us.
So, we had to terminate the CEO in 2000 and figure out a way.
Who was the CEO?
I don't want to say.
No, no.
So, you're joking.
It's not you.
It's somebody.
CEO.
Oh, so when did you stop being a CEO?
We stopped in 2000.
Oh, I'm thinking you stayed CEO the entire time.
Chairman.
Okay, so you stopped being a CEO in 2000.
Okay.
Just for your audience, you had a founder who originates the concept.
You got a CEO who runs the whole organization.
You've got a chairman of the board who runs the board, who the CEO reports to.
And then you've got a spokesperson, i.e., Papa John.
So I carry sometimes four hats, and sometimes, like today, shareholder and founder, two hats.
So the quality.
Who's the most important out of all those?
Because this is a question that I had.
CEO is number one?
It's not.
No, I have my opinion, and I'll let him answer, but I don't think it's even a question.
I think the CEO with the founders methods and ideology assuming the CEO has the right mindset, has a quality mindset, not a production mindset, and knows how to get the right people on the bus and get them in the right seats.
So anyway, I retired in 2000 and we couldn't figure out how do you measure a million pizzas a day.
And we worked on that for almost a year and had a tomato supplier out in Modesto, came into Kentucky and we sat up till 2, 3 in the morning and figured out you're never going to measure a million pizzas a day.
But what you can do is measure $65,000 a year in poll like you do in an election.
And we set up a program to where we had pictures and service and stopwatches in 40,000, 50,000 homes throughout the country so we could monitor the product quality and service.
Now, fundamentals in a business are like staying fit.
You got to do your emotional, spiritual, and physical push-ups every day.
You saw those product, the product came in from Jets Pete's and Papa John's.
You saw that when you came in.
To get that Papa John's product quality, which was probably a six or seven, back to when I left almost a nine or 10, because you're never going to get to a 10, but you've got to be above an eight, would take a year and a half wear and tear on me to get them back in shape to do that.
That's why I fought so hard the first two years.
Don't do this.
Don't let this regime come in here and destroy your product quality and your service because once you guys lose, once you get 80 pounds overweight, it's awfully hard to get back in shape.
So we fixed the business from 01 to 05.
We had the culture lined up, had the measurement system lined up.
We're back to quality.
Stock went from 10 bucks back up to 40 bucks.
We're on a road.
We hired another CEO.
He comes in.
First thing he does, lets quality soften, make sure the guys in the C-suite get their stock options.
The people at the stores get screwed, starts making money on the food service.
0809 got rid of him came back in stock 680 a share and that's when we had that was down from 40 at the top 40 or 50 from the top.
No, to 680 a share.
This is October, November of 2008.
Came back in, but now we have the lessons in 99.
We have the culture in 2000, 2001, and we also have the measurement system.
So within a year, year and a half, we have, we're back on top.
We have our goal left culture.
We're running our business on principles.
We got great product quality, great service.
We're the number one place to work in Kentucky for six straight years.
We win ACSI Quality World World World Award in the pizza category 18, 19 years.
The only restaurant chain to even compete with this that was better was Chick-fil-A.
And so now we took the stock from $680 in 2009 to when I stepped down in 16 to 88 bucks a share.
Wow.
Whoa.
13 fold.
Yeah.
13 fold.
So let me ask you this question.
And I'm curious to know what you're going to say about this.
How much of it was the new CEOs you hired that weren't capable of doing the job?
And how much of it was the fact that you stayed as the chairman?
It was very annoying to be reporting to the founder because they can never be as good as you.
So you were always kind of almost not helping them out.
You were not.
Because sometimes you can get in the way as the founder of the new CEO that you hire.
Yes, yes, and yes.
Okay.
Yes.
Well, fair enough for you to say that, though, you know, if you're saying that.
Yeah, it's a toughie.
How do you find the right man to marry your daughter?
You know, it's like it's your baby.
We groomed a guy between myself and the present CEO.
The present CEO of Papa John's is Rob Lynch.
And the company's in worse shape than it was when I was there at $680 a share as far as product quality service.
Today.
Oh, I mean, it's not like a black cloud over it.
It's got a death spiral.
I mean, why you would touch that stock at $85 a share when the product is bad, the service is bad.
The franchisees are not making the money they were making.
Their traffic cancel is down.
International comps, negative eight.
Russia, it's in the tube.
UK's in the tube.
China, when Taiwan hits, is going to be in the tube.
I mean, there's nobody building stores in the U.S. You have no growth.
If you take their Philadelphia franchisee two years ago, we're going to build 49 stores in Philadelphia.
That guy's gone.
He's not going to open any stores.
The guy they signed up in Texas, getting ready to open 100 stores.
I don't think he's opened any.
The traffic counts, they've got bragg about 18 million new customers.
Traffic counts are like negative hypothetical 4%, 6%, 8%, 10%, 12%.
You know, if I was an analyst, I would say, give me the markets you're going to grow in outside of Russia, Poland, Germany, UK, China.
How come international comps are negative 8?
How come UK is in the tank?
How come your traffic count in the U.S., you've got all these new customers is negative?
How come you've lost the ACSI award the last couple of years?
How's your franchisee doing in Dallas?
How's they doing in Pennsylvania?
And by the way, how much money did your corporate restaurants make in August?
Just ask a question.
What are your transactions?
What did corporate stores made in August?
If they would answer that question honestly, I bet the analysts, I bet they'd run for the woods.
Well, I'm glad you're being very gentle about the way you're putting them on blast.
It was very, you know, the way you went about it.
If they're listening to it right now, the founder who started this company is calling out a product today with Papa John's, which we'll find out here in a minute when we order because it breaks my heart because I've been.
Question for you, Papa John.
When you're saying all this, essentially kind of throwing your namesake in the mud, are you disgusted by it?
Does it upset you?
Or you're like, well, you know, when I was there, maybe you're more proud of what you were able to accomplish.
Like, how do you feel basically saying everything you just said about the company where it's at now?
We've been through this now three times, where every time I leave, they get away from the principles, they get away from the quality, they get away from their service, get away from their transparency.
So is there an emotion that this horses are, if you could put a name to it?
First of all, you hurt for the employees.
Because when this went down, this started three years ago, four years ago.
And they don't care about the employees.
And we're not in the pizza business.
We're in the people business.
I mean, there's three, 400 families in Louisville that just got left hanging because they just picked up and went to Atlanta.
All the good employees that were there 10, 15, 20, 25 years are gone.
So no regard for people.
And the thing that I tried to do is I tried to save the employees.
I tried to save the franchisees.
And employees, they just moved so quick.
They didn't care and they wanted to cut GNA.
Franchisees, I've been telling them for some time, hey, pay attention to your food quality.
We've been through this.
We've seen this movie before.
You get your service.
And then COVID came along.
You got a monopoly.
Got a captive audience where people are sitting at home consuming alcohol.
You can charge a higher number because people are trapped and they got free money, entitlements.
And so this last two years, they've had a free ride.
That's the worst thing that could have happened to Rob Lynch, the CEO of Papa John's, because he thought it was easy.
He got lazy.
He got caught flat-footed.
Now they let the product and the service slipped, image slip.
What they should have been doing the last two years is getting ready for this day when COVID's gone and we're back to reality.
They got caught flat-footed, and now they're in a spiral downward because of the reason we just mentioned.
By the way, the same can be said for everyday Americans.
All the entitlements you're talking about, the stimulus that you're getting, the free money that was going out there, people got lazy.
And then obviously you see what's happening now.
We talked about this February, March of 2020 on the interviews.
The thing most dangerous about this is the psychology.
Habits are formed in 18 days, solidified in 44, and in three months, it's a lifestyle.
We've been sitting around for three years with free money.
I worry about the psychology of getting free money and not have to make a contribution.
Socialism is taking from people that produce and rewarding to people that don't produce.
That's what we've been doing for three years.
Well, we know it doesn't work.
It's an idea that it comes out of a place that's never been proven.
No one's ever proven that this system works.
And America proved no system has provided better innovation in the world than the concept of capitalism.
No country has done a better job doing that than we have.
So they can give their argument as much as they want.
Hey, Pat, before we transition, I really want to get your feedback on that initial question I had.
He said, you said, oh, there's no question as to who the most important is.
I asked CEO, founder, director of the board, the spokesperson, the president.
You said no question.
And then he answered, I think you said the founder and the CEO, if they're in visions in line, visions in line.
None of these is as hard.
Okay.
Who's got a tougher job?
Biden, Trump, Obama, Bush, Clinton, Reagan, or Washington?
Washington.
There's not even a question about it.
Who's got a harder job?
You know, Tim Cook or Steve Jobs and Wozniak.
It's not even a question to see.
The founder has, it's a very, very, it's very, very emotionally taxing.
And not just on you, on everybody in your family that's involved with you, your spouse, your kids, everybody.
A founder's life is not a sexy life.
It's just not.
That's just the reality of it.
There's nothing sexy about being a founder while you're a founder the first 10, 15 years.
Said he got no sleep for 12 years.
No, but it's not that.
It's a very honorable profession.
It's a very honorable position to be in, but it comes with a lot of burden.
It's not the most, you know, people think, oh, look at this founder.
He's worth what he's worth.
Oh, yeah, go do it again.
Well, matter of fact, if you do it, I'll give you twice as much money as he made.
Go ahead and do it.
Go see.
This is what you summarized in your 90-second video, The Life of an Entrepreneur, right?
It's not for everybody.
So when you run, you know, when you run into, when I go and run into somebody that's got a military uniform on, I'll say, thank you for your service.
When I run into a cop, I'll say, thank you for your service.
If I go to a restaurant or a small business where the owner is there, I'll say thank you for your service.
And so what do you mean by I was never in the military?
Yeah, but you're running a business and you're creating jobs.
And because of you, I get to pay less taxes because these people are getting paid by you, not by taxpayers like me.
Thank you for your service.
So more people should stop by business owners and tell them, thank you for your service because it's not an easy job.
It's a very hard job to do.
Thank you for your service.
My pleasure.
Yeah, there's no question.
By the way, at the peak, how many pizzas were you guys selling at the peak?
Peak peak when you were there, how many were you guys selling?
I think we were right at a million a day, 360 million pizzas, something like that.
A million pizzas a day.
I know it was a crazy number one Super Bowl Sunday the last year.
I was there.
I think we did $20 million or $20 million.
It was a crazy number.
20 million.
I wasn't 20 million pizzas.
Maybe it was 20 million bucks in one day.
That's intense.
We used to do $200 a day until we were rich in the broom club.
But that's a cool thing, though.
It doesn't matter.
I mean, that's the story.
So look, let's address one thing.
We're about to order the pizzas here in a minute, and then I want to go into some of the other issues that we got.
But let's address one thing.
So all of a sudden, one day, I'm looking at the news saying, you know, Papa John is stepping down.
Okay.
Hey, he's resigning.
The board is asking him to resign.
He's choosing to resign.
All that mess that took place.
Then I said, how did this just happen?
This doesn't make any sense to me for what happened.
So, you know, America, we know we're all about innocent until proven guilty.
Sometimes the media is more about guilty until proven innocent, which they take a different model than innocent until proven guilty.
I listened to the recording.
I listened to the 54-minute call, whatever the 54-minute, I think it's a 54-minute Zoom or call that they had.
I listened to the call that they had.
I listened to their conversations.
I read the manual.
I went through it to just kind of see for myself.
Why don't you take a moment and if you don't mind, share, you know, what happened the day where you were essentially forced to resign from the company?
What led to those events?
I think I knew something was up.
When you run a business, you've got pretty good intuition.
And they, you know, exacerbated the Obama comments.
NFL, I said, hey, just solve it to the owners and players' satisfaction.
They painted that in the kneeling somehow.
I mean, just they kept doing it.
And I'm like, and my company would never step in and say, well, that's not what he said.
Just read the transcript.
And fortunately, everything I've done, there's a transcript.
And there's no history of race.
There's no history of not treating everybody with kindness, with love, compassion, and respect.
But I felt something that was going on behind the scenes, but I didn't think it was an inside job.
I thought it was coming from the DNC or from the outside.
It ended up being it was a combination of both.
But when they set this up with Laundry Service and Laundry Service leaked a false narrative to what I said, actually what I said was anti-racist and they painted as racist, mischaracterized it.
The thing I asked the board is, I said, slow down.
I can remember this coming down on a Tuesday.
We had a board meeting.
I said, just slow down.
Let's make sure you all know what I said.
You know my heart.
You know, there's no history of this kind of, you know, mindset, behavior, feelings towards anybody on prejudice.
And I couldn't get the board to slow down.
So Wednesday, they said, hey, if you would step down as chairman, then that would solve the problems.
One of the board members, Sonia Medea, called me the next day and said, you know, by stepping down as chairman, you saved the company.
This is on a Thursday.
And so I stepped down more to just kind of let things settle down a little bit.
And then on Friday, they said, we're going to have an emergency board meeting on Sunday.
And then Saturday that week, so less than six days, we went from where chairman, principal shareholder, founder spokesperson, to where that Sunday, they actually kicked me to the street.
Now that I was no longer a chairman, I wasn't even in the office and I lost my employment agreement.
So I think the thing, the lesson there is as a company and corporate board member, you have a fiduciary duty to do an investigation, set up a committee and do an investigation and get to the bottom of what happened.
This board, because I think I had some board members on board, I know I did, that had self-interest that wanted me out.
One of the directors, Mark Shapiro, the other director, Steve Ritchie.
Mark Shapiro got a $10 million package and got the $40 million marketing business after I was ousted as chairman.
And Richie got a $6 million a year package because we were getting ready to terminate him for the reasons we talked about.
So we had two board members that were kind of on the inside, had a weak board, corporate board.
They really didn't understand the business.
I think they bought into a bad bill of goods with Mark Shapiro and Steve Ritchie, and they overreacted due to their corporate duty and just did a tremendous damage to the brand by not getting to the bottom of exactly what I said and not having some kind of defense in.
And by the company not having any defense and not taking a position to support the founder, they're complicit.
Yeah, and you know what's interesting.
So I dug into this because sometimes as a business owner and you got strong opinions and you're vocal about it, you got to be careful because you're a target.
And I'm somebody that runs businesses and I have strong opinions.
And, you know, there are a lot of people that don't like that.
So for somebody like me, I said, let me take you as a case study.
And I'm going to look at because there's many case studies like yours.
I said, let me take him as a case study.
So in 2012, I want to say you're at an event and you made some comments about the Affordable Care Act on a class on entrepreneurship and a shareholder conference call.
You said that you oppose ACS because your best estimate was that Obamacare was going to cost you around 11 to 14 cents per pizza.
Okay.
That's what the article wrote about you, what it says.
But look at the context.
You kind of just did a little bit of what they do.
I said, delivery charge is $250, $275 a pizza.
Yeah.
Obamacare is only $12 or $13.
It's not a big deal.
We can absorb it.
I disagree with it, but it's not a problem for us because of our volume and the amount of transactions we have.
Yeah, but my point is a businessman has to look at these numbers.
Like you just said, like garlic costs $0.09.
And if we're doing $20 million a year, that's $200 million.
That's a real money if you're doing some number like that.
You're saying $365, let's just say you do 365 million pots, you know, pizzas per year, and each pizza has one of those garlic sauce, 9 cents.
That's a number that you got to look at.
You said 15 to 30 million in garlic sauce, I believe.
It depends on how many they do.
If they do 365, it's more like 35 million, not 35 million bucks in garlic.
But you have to understand, if you're a founder and you're the spokesperson, and if you say, listen, if my costs go up, I just pass them on to the consumer.
The left will attack you for saying what I just said.
But guess what?
If you're in the business and the costs go up, you pass it on to the consumer.
That's, yeah.
I mean, to you, nah, it's common sense.
It has to, like, right now, California.
I don't know if you saw in California.
By the way, I'll tell you what I did.
I see you.
Just so you know, I'll let you know.
So when I'm, one of the guys shows up here.
A guy runs a restaurant in Mexican restaurants in California.
He's got 38 of them.
Okay.
So he said, did you hear about the new law that just got passed for restaurant chains with over 100 locations?
I said, yeah, I heard about it.
So he says, this is going to impact us.
I said, let me take a look at it.
So I'm looking into it.
I said, well, they're raising the minimum wage.
Did you see the number?
They're raising the minimum wage.
$22, I believe it's $20.
$29.
In California per employee working at a restaurant that's got 100 chains or more.
Okay.
So if it's 15 going to 22, that's a 50% increase.
And restaurants' margins generally are what?
3% to 5%.
If a burger is $4, overnight, it's $6.
So if the customer says, I can't believe these guys are raising it, it's not these guys raising it.
It's $22.
That's the minimum wage, that the price is being paid.
Okay, so the guy that the business owner has to say, he's like, Pat, how do I handle this?
I said, You have to handle it by being prepared for this.
So you got to raise your costs and tell the explain to the customer.
Here's what we have to do.
Because he's simply having a conversation with the board to say, This is what it's going to cost us.
I'm not offended by this.
I'm expecting a guy to be talking about this because if you don't, maybe you're not the right guy to pay attention to these types of costs.
So then, next is you were at the Romney deal, and I think you something happened with Romney at a fundraiser.
You hosted a fundraiser for Romney in May of 2012.
And you've said good things about Trump.
I think he contributed towards him.
And then there were some things that was in 2017.
And then right afterwards, this event takes place, right?
With your situation.
So I said, let me go read into what you said because, believe it or not, I thought this entire time you said the N-word, okay?
Do you know the story with how did you listen to the recording?
I watched the whole thing.
There was a Colonel Sanders reference.
Yeah.
I think it's important for him to address it.
Yeah.
So it was, you know, in 2017 on an earnings conference called the NFL was hurting, and more importantly, by now, resolving the current debacle and NPA players, NFL players' satisfaction.
NFL leadership has hurt Papa John's shareholders.
Okay, fine.
It's a call out to the NFL.
They're not going to be happy about it.
This should have been nipped in about a year ago.
Fine.
And then it says, Papa John's founder used N-word on a conference call.
So what?
So what's the context here?
And you hear the recording questions in the first place because you know it wasn't intentional, it was sensitive.
But the word was even Colonel Sanders called blacks.
Then you don't say N-word, you say the actual word.
And I'm like, I've never used this word before.
So then it goes back and the marketing agency's recording comes back on what they were trying to do to get him down.
And hey, we just have to get him to speak the truth and want him to write down bullet points and let him go.
And anyways, this guy named Jason Stein is saying what he's saying.
Then you're kind of watching that saying, well, look, these guys were not necessarily coming from a place of trying to help you as a marketing agency.
They were kind of coming from a place of seeing, hey, what can we do to you rather than help you?
But to the market, unfortunately, in today's times, all they see is this guy must be a racist.
And for me, this is how I view it.
If let's just say you're somebody, we go to a bar, and all of a sudden you have a drink.
And after a drink, you look at a guy, he says something to you, punch him in the face.
My goodness, what the hell was that all about?
Then I call around some of your friends and he said, oh, yeah, Adam's known for that.
What do you mean, Adam's known for that?
Adam does that all the time.
Seriously?
Yeah, one time we were in high school, he did this to that guy.
One time we went to a club, he did that to that guy.
I can tell you, I've seen Adam do that 20 times.
Well, guess what?
There is a trend.
But if this happens on a call like this in 2017, and you've been in business since 1984, how many total W-2 employees have you had all these years?
How many people would come out and say, yeah, he called me that as well.
He used that word as well.
He would do.
See, that's the investigative journalism that doesn't go that deep to show that.
And then all they do is people jump to conclusion and boom.
Now you got somebody that's not running the brand, which all of us, if we watch Sunday football, who would you see?
You would see, you know, so many times in my life.
So the fact that he's sitting here.
But there is a point here.
For somebody that's gone through it, yourself that's gone through this situation here.
We had at an event I hosted last week in the last week in Madrid.
Yeah, two weeks ago.
I'm sorry, 10 days ago.
We had an event at The Diplomat.
And we brought Chas Palm and Terry, who did the one-man show Bronx Tale.
Oh, man.
We had Robert Kiyosaki there.
We had the number one illusionist in America, a good friend of mine, Frederick DeSilva, there.
We had Kevin Connolly from Entourage, the show Entourage.
And then we had Andy Fastow.
I don't know if you know who Andy Fastow is.
Andy Fastow is the former CFO of Enron, who went to jail for eight years.
Wow.
And he had 100,000 employees.
Everybody's like, why would you invite Andy Fastow?
I said, I'm trying to keep you guys out of jail.
You got to pay attention to accounting.
You think this is just making money?
So he came up, and this is his opening talk.
One of the best talks you'll see.
He says, This is me.
He shows the magazine.
Your prior to this, I was recognized as the CFO of the year.
The next year, this is my personality ID card.
Okay.
One year ago, I'm the CFO of the year.
The next year, I'm this.
And he tells his own story.
So, for some people that are becoming, you know, maybe they have a business brand and they're not low-key.
Maybe they have a following.
Maybe they have a voice.
Maybe they have some political leadings.
Maybe they have some strong opinions.
What feedback would you give to other founders, CEOs, and entrepreneurs to be careful with in a climate like this where everything is so you're walking on eggshells and it's a cancel culture type of an environment?
What feedback would you give to operators like that?
I think several.
One is people always usually ask in their own act in their own best interest.
You have a board of directors that hired a CEO that had an agency that sets the founder, the face of the brand up, and betrays a false narrative that is a racist.
Who in their right mind tell me how that's in anybody's best interest?
The shareholders, the franchisees, employees, the founder, the board.
It's in nobody's best interest unless you're Washington and you want to be ahead of the DNC because I'm involved with a lot of things that involve entrepreneurship.
I mean, so from my perspective, there's no way I could have seen this coming because you wouldn't think back to the inside job that people would act in something that's so far in everybody's worst interest.
The second thing is the, okay, I was set up, false narrative, shouldn't repeated Colonel Sanders, but the intent, it's a good heart.
And, you know, slurs or anything like that.
It's all about what you meant and what you felt.
And there was nothing but love and kindness in the history.
There's no history of this kind of repeated offense.
There's no priors, is what you're saying.
Of course not.
But let's get the two-inch violin out.
Let's do a 10-second pity party for John and let's get on with life.
Because the universe always works for me.
It never works against me.
Sometimes it felt like it.
Now, why I had to go through what I went through to get to why I'm sitting here, I don't know.
But you got to take that position.
And I look at California at 22 bucks.
I look at Ukraine and Russia.
I look at, you know, this labor market.
For some reason, it was my time to get out of that situation.
I wouldn't have done it that way.
I'd have given a decent burial, but it wasn't my choice.
They overreacted.
They panicked.
They did a lot of damage.
And it's done.
It's done.
They will be held accountable.
So I think moving forward, you got to go, okay, what did I learn from that?
And the thing is, in your 90-second tape, you know, you wake up every day and you make it happen.
And so I don't know what the universe has in store for me.
I can tell you the four principles, the four characteristics is me that I want to have.
But that other opportunity will come along and we'll do something bigger and better for humanity that's better than the bar, better than the pizza.
And, you know, my four criteria are: it's got to be in my soul.
It's got to be part of it.
It's got to be authentic.
It's got to be real.
It's got to be truthful.
Two is it's got to better humanity.
If I'm not better than my fellow man, that's why I hated the bar.
Pizza was fun.
It brought friends and family together, but it's processed food, let's face it.
I want something that's going to improve humanity.
I want something that can scale up because I like big stuff.
I like making an impact.
And fourth is it's got to be sustainable.
I don't want to be feeded every month.
Until I come across those four things that are in my being, in my fabric of my soul, then I'll just have to sit tight and be patient.
Remember, I'm an entrepreneur.
I'm allergic to patience.
So, this is very difficult to sit here for three years and not do a whole lot of anything.
But I'm doing it.
Can I assume what you have been doing?
When you were going through all this, permission to speak freely here, you didn't look your best.
You were probably 30 pounds heavier, 40 pounds heavier.
You look great right now.
So, I assume you've been working on yourself inside, outside, emotional, physical, all that fun stuff.
You know, people kind of go, you know, when this went down, did you hit rock bottom?
And the answer is no, because the people that did this, I loved them.
I loved them and I protected them.
And I mean, I made them all multi-millionaires.
This went down July of 18.
It wasn't until January, February, 19 where I finally had to come to grips where they really did do this.
People that I really care about really, it was so painful to see that I would just go blind.
I wouldn't see it.
And that was the hardest moment.
I don't know, January, February, March of 19.
Whereas these people really did this.
I mean, they painted me as a racist.
I mean, can you imagine being the founder, the spokesperson, taking that thing from $640 a share to the company's worth $3.5 billion?
And the people that are around you, they're supposed to be protecting you, hired an agency and set you up.
I didn't want to see it.
And so you had to get back to get out of denial and get right back to they did it.
Now, from there, you keep harping on it.
You're angry, you're jealous, you're vindictive.
Well, shit, that's no way to go.
So you just got to kind of go, all right, I forgive them, but I didn't forget their name or whatever, wherever you're at.
And, you know, you just move on and you just start trusting the universe.
You trust in a higher power and you just know that there's something bigger and better lying ahead.
You know, pizza, when you hire pizza employees, they don't have MBAs.
They don't have, they hire people like me.
Like when I was 18, I'm going to be working at places like that, right?
So I'm not somebody.
I'm Middle Eastern.
So pizza people hire what?
Minorities.
That's who you hire.
So you've had many, many, many, many chances to offend those communities.
You haven't.
It so happens that you do that in that sense.
Now, look, for us, I don't think in any context it's to use that word.
Just the other day, I'm playing a video by Fat Joe, and I was uncomfortable because he kept saying, I'm like, well, it is what I listen today.
I'm working out what E in the morning, six o'clock in the morning.
You know what?
I'm listening to the workout.
Who do you think I'm listening to when I'm working out today?
I'm listening to Troublesome.
I'm listening to Life Goes On.
I'm listening to, you know, all I need in this life is sin is me and my, you know, I'm listening to Hit Emp This Morning.
I'm working out.
And I'm sitting with Jimbo and we're working out right now.
Some people say, Pa, you've lost your mind.
Gets me going at the gym.
Now, so sometimes we are round it, but I'm glad you were open to talking about that.
Appreciate you for doing out being a good sport about it because, again, in business nowadays, what I hear a lot when we're doing consulting with different folks, this is starting to become more of an issue today than before.
So it's constantly coming up.
Yeah, the two things that I'm most thankful for going through this, for some reason, the public knew this was dirty pool.
They knew this had a stint.
They never bought into this whole story.
They didn't buy into the job.
And I mean, usually the public is kind of gullible.
And the second thing is, I have a tape.
They left the tape.
The dumbasses left the tape running.
And I have the tape that says, you know, we, you know, we basically hope he gets sent out to pasture.
We hope this guy gets screwed because we're part of it.
So we got him by the throat.
They set me up.
They mischaracterized what I said.
They reversed the intent of what I said, and the public never bought it in the first place.
So, how lucky am I?
Well, based on that, I think that's the best transition to see.
Let's see how their pizza is doing.
So, Eric, if you want to bring everybody in here, real quick, we are going to do a social experiment right now.
A social experiment that we just thought about last minute.
If you guys want to head in here and don't break the bank's vault door, okay.
So, what oh, Neil, oh, Neil has entered the building.
So, everybody, come over here, come around, come on, come around, Natalia.
Come on, Natalia.
We got Rob as well in his suit today.
So, nice to meet you.
How are you doing?
What's your name, sir?
I recognize this girl.
I recognize this girl right here.
How are you doing?
How you doing?
How are you doing?
Okay, Natalia.
So, here's what we're going to do: here's what we're going to do.
Rob, I asked you to get numbers to four local pizza joints, okay?
Right?
We said four of them.
Yep, we have four.
So, each of you is going to call one of them simultaneously.
You're going to step out and you're going to time it.
I'm going to give you the time on when you called it.
Okay.
Okay.
You're going to get the number ready to call, and you're going to tell us who you're calling.
You're going to order a regular pizza, a pepperoni pizza, and the works, right?
Is that what we agreed on?
John, those are the two we're doing.
Yeah, we'll do Peps and the Works.
Okay, Peps and the Works.
Okay, that's what you're doing.
And then we're going to wait to see how long it takes to come.
We'll time it, Eric.
I say, come in here to the front door.
Somebody's just got to time it.
32 minutes, 28 minutes, 26 minutes, 59 minutes, whatever the time is going to be.
Well, hopefully with the podcast, then we'll be here and we'll judge this pizza by somebody who's been in this space for quite a while.
So he kind of knows the pizza game well.
So the moment we say 3-2-1, first of all, who are you calling?
Natalia, who's yours?
I'm calling Pizza Hut.
Okay, so you're calling Pizza Hut.
Papa Johns.
Papa John's.
Dominoes.
Dominoes?
Jets.
Jets.
Get your phones ready, everybody, on 3-2-1.
I'll let you know to dial.
3-2-1.
Dial.
323.
You guys can step out.
You guys can step out.
You guys can step out and go place your orders.
And don't mention a guy we know named Papa John.
Okay.
All right.
323 it is.
Hey, Neil, good to see you, buddy.
You as well.
323 it is to see how long this is going to take.
What'd you say?
Are they already calling?
Yes.
Okay, sounds good.
All right, so let's get back into this here today.
Do you still eat pizza?
I eat pizza, yeah.
Do you?
Do you make it yourself, or is it do you order it?
Do you?
I've got a pizza oven at home.
The key to the pizza is really the oven and the dough.
And so I'll get some dough from Papa John's or get some dough from my friends at Jets Pizza.
And then once you got the dough right in the oven, right, you can kind of wink it from there.
Now, which dough is more important, dough as in bread or dough as in money?
Which dough would you say?
Because you got both of them.
So this guy made the dough by making the dough.
Well, without the first dough, I wouldn't have the second dough.
So probably the first dough of the pizza, right?
I think money talks and DS walks.
I think you got to go with the cash.
You got to go with the cash is what you got to go with.
So today, with everything that's going on, you were talking about a lot of different things in regards to pizza.
I got a couple guys that I know that run pizza shops.
Is this a time where a small business owner, kind of like yourself, that came out and you go, you were telling the Ray Croc story as the founder, how he went from not being the first Burger King was there already.
You know, all the other guys were, is this a good time to open up a pizza business?
You know, I started at Rangonomics in 1984 when I founded Papa John's.
You know, we had a leader that was small regulation, pro-business, pro-small business.
You know, what was it saying?
The most dangerous words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.
Yeah.
Small, you know, smaller taxes.
I grew up with that.
And I mean, how lucky was I?
You know, this situation, this administration is just anti-small business.
And I don't like what when you've, you can have empathy for folks when you've walked a mile on their shoe.
I mean, you know, I told you we cut grass when I was eight, painted gutters when I was 12, did the bar when I was 21, started Papa John's when I was 20.
I mean, even when we got big, we were a family of small businesses.
You know, every franchisee had, what, three or four stores.
So my love and affection and appreciation and respect for small business is probably second to none.
I mean, if I was going to, like, let's take a Papa John franchisee.
You know, you're getting involved with a company that's let the quality slip, let the service slip.
Unit economics, I'm not sure 30, 40, 50% of the stores out there are not making money or breaking even.
You had this issue with the founder that you got a board that hired a CEO, hired an agency that caused a huge mess and really tainted the brand.
Is that team still there that got rid of you?
No, the CEO that did this got fired probably 10 months after I left.
They fired the CEO that did this.
But by that time, they were already in default of their loans.
It didn't take long to crater Papa John's when I left.
I mean, this went down in July of 18, and by November of 18, they were already in default of their loans and their loan covenants.
It went down quick after I left, and then COVID saved them for a couple of years, and now the stock's less today than it was when I was there in 2016.
But my biggest concern for a potential Papa John franchisee and the franchisees who are there now, who I know and love, is this IRS thing.
You know, you saw last night where Mike Landell was raided with the FBI.
Trump just got raided.
I mean, we now have Nazi Germany, where if you're a conservative and you believe in conservative principles and you're outspoken, you've got the KGB.
You believe that?
The AG, the FBI, the Internal Revenue Service now.
I mean, yeah, the government is now an enemy of the freedoms of the people.
And if you don't think that, you know, if they attack Lindell, Trump, Flynn, Papa John, if they attack us, sooner or later, they're going to attack every American that doesn't believe in their ideology, that has a voice.
And you came from Iran.
I've talked to people from Hungary, Lebanon, Pakistan.
I mean, you all know exactly what we're dealing with.
Cuba, Venezuela.
I mean, you all know that this is not fun stuff.
When the state controls the media and the state controls the government agencies that can perpetrate and hurt the people that are supposed to be protecting our freedoms, you're dealing with a very dangerous situation here.
And by the way, they don't hide what they do.
They're very open because they want to intimidate you so folks like the three of us don't talk about what they're doing.
But this is a very dangerous situation when the state controls the media and controls the agencies which are going after our freedoms, our individual freedoms, our freedom of speech, etc.
Do you think this strategy they're taking is sustainable long term?
Or do you think eventually it's going to come to a stop?
Or do you think people have to stand up today or else it could end up being something that stays for a while?
If it continues, then we are down the path where we reward people that don't work with monies from people that do work.
That's socialism.
I mean, show me anywhere in the history of man where socialism hasn't decreased the quality of life for its citizens.
So this is, yeah, this is going to get, it's going to have to get, I mean, this midterm is crucial to stopping the, you know, the kind of the KGB, Nazi, Gestapo kind of mindset and ideologies has been promoted by the upper left right now.
I think this is critical.
Do you think they're going to, last night we're having dinner at a restaurant I've never been before called Casa D'Angelo.
Yeah, good place.
Which I go there three or four times a week.
I was at Angelo today, and we're sitting down having a good dinner with a few of our friends.
And one of the questions comes up at the end after two and a half hours of dinner.
Do you think he's going to get indicted?
Do you think that's going to happen?
If you watch some outlets, left, right, center, some are saying yes.
All of left is saying yes.
Some of right are starting to say yes.
Question number one: Do you think he'll get indicted?
Number two, if he does, what will happen?
Who are you talking about?
Trump?
Trump.
Yeah.
Okay.
If you're Trump and you weren't prepared for this and you didn't set a booby trap, then you deserve what you're going to get because you know he had to know that they were going to come after him.
And if you don't think that way, if I'm not thinking that way, I'm thinking that way.
Five moves ahead.
Landell was thinking that way.
You're in our shoes.
You've got to be knowing what they're going to do.
Steve Bannon's been out saying they're going to raid Mar-a-Lago now for six months, 12 months.
So what Trump should have had was a picture of Biden's.
I mean, there should have been something in there where it made them all look like fools.
But, you know, if he had classified documents that really are unclassified because he has the right to do that, he's got to know that even though he unclassified him, they say top secret, perception-wise, they're going to kill him.
But he has to know that.
He's a smart guy.
He's the smart of the three of us put together.
So if he got sloppy, and he wasn't the one that put it all over the office floor, he didn't do that.
That was a setup by the FBI.
But if he did not prepare for them to do what they did, not knowing that they're going to twist it.
Remember, I said, Colonel Sanders says it.
I would never say it.
Lost my company.
They will twist the slightest little thing and destroy you.
He's got to know that.
And if he left himself wide open, he's going to pay the price.
So your answer is he could possibly be indicted.
Okay.
Remember the COVID vaccines?
Before then, they had, I'm not going to, chlori, hydroxychloroquine, and then help me with other imectrinum.
Ivermectin.
Okay.
The one there that's really the one that does it, Imectrum, but both hydroxychloroquine and both ivermectectam.
Ivermectin ivermectum will keep you from getting sick.
He put hydroxychloroquine out there because he knew it would work and he knew the left would shoot it down because he promoted it.
He did that intentionally to leave the other drug where you get access to it.
He's a smart guy.
I mean, he's a smart guy.
He knows what he's doing.
I can't believe that he would leave himself that wide open, especially with lawyers.
What's your split?
Is it 50-50, 80-20?
That he's indicted?
Yeah.
The market crashed yesterday.
That just changed the whole election, what, 54 days out.
So it depends on what day it is.
I think that the left will do anything to get the focus of the American public's attention off fuel prices, devaluating the dollar, inflation, the war, the botched defunding of the police, anything to get the public off the real issues and on to Trump or something else.
I think that the media will do it because the media is simply an arm for the left.
So, I mean, if it'll sell newspapers and draw attention from the real issues, I think the left won't go that far with this.
So you're more of a, it's more likely to happen than not to happen.
That's kind of what you're saying.
That's how I took it.
Well, no.
Kai, I'm sending you a few pictures.
Prepare those, please.
I think the odds of Trump not being prepared for this are very low.
So you're saying he's ready for it if they do indict him.
If he wasn't prepared for this, then shame on him.
He's now had four years to know that he's dealing with the devil and the devil plays dirty on every corner.
And if he's a proactive guy, so I think he is ready.
Now, whether this AG files indicts him or not, that's just simply the craziness of the left.
Even if he didn't do anything wrong, which again, he can declassify whatever he says he can declassify.
If they find a technicality, well, you declassify, but you didn't follow the right process, then he's done.
I guess we're going to find out here soon what happens there.
By the way, you were an operator from 84 to, say, 18, 34 years of running a business from zero to a multi-multi-billion dollar company, right?
$3.5 billion company.
Yeah, that's pretty intense to do something like that.
Very few people in America have done that.
But the question becomes, how closely are you following the markers?
Because for you, the pizza business, you have to follow market closely because your customer is low and middle income families and sports fans.
So everything matters to you.
Like when 9-11 happens, probably you can track back to what happened to your business, whether it was good or not.
Or when, you know, 2008 happened, 2007, when the market tanked 38%, you have to see, well, that was a good year for us because people went from buying high-end food to they realize they can afford to only buy pizza.
So we did well.
Our disc did well.
When you look at the different markers today, okay, well, what we have, amount of money we printed, we're seeing inflation.
We're seeing gas prices.
We're seeing what happened to the stock market yesterday.
We're seeing loan officers refinancing business out.
Mortgage rates are up now, you know, 6%, 5.9%.
If you got a 650 credit score, all this stuff that's happening, and then you hear the camp, we're not on recession.
We know the definition of recession.
We know all this stuff.
Have we hit bottom yet?
It's at 31,000 right now.
If you look at Dow today, it's at 31,000, give or take, right?
It went up a little bit, but not a lot of it.
But it's around 31,000 Dow.
How low do you think it'll go?
It's at 30,952 is where it closed.
It ended up being down 152,000.
Are we at the bottom?
Or do you think with the things that's going on, we're still got some more room to go lower than 30,950 today?
Well, I can tell you one of three things.
The market will go up.
It'll stay the same.
It'll go down.
That's what's going to happen.
Who knows?
Market December when Trump was still in office of 19, the market was 29,7, 30,000.
So we're within 4% of what it was when Trump was in office.
I invest to where if the market goes to 40, I do real well.
I hit a lot.
If the market stays at 35, I still get my dividend income and I'm fine with that.
And if the market crashes, I've got a fund called the Black Swan Universal.
It's a Black Swan event.
Last time the market went from 29,7 down to 20.
That was up 4,000 times, 4,000%.
So it's a real hedge fund.
So I'm in a position where whatever happens, I love, it's called Almar Fatih.
A-R-M-O-R-Fati, F-I-T-I, Amar Fatih.
Love that fate.
So no matter what happens, I love my fate.
Now, I think the market is sketchy to go down.
But remember, black swan events are not predictable, i.e. they're printing money.
We got a war in Taiwan, potentially, a war in Ukraine.
Black swan events are a dice, though.
You can pick a dice with six sides.
You can pick a dice with 120 sides.
120 sides is about all you can get before it becomes a marble and it really doesn't ever stop.
Interesting.
So what the bet is, here's the bet, gentlemen.
Here's your black swan.
Here's your universal.
I'm going to bet you that those 120 dice, because what goes on in the world, it's probably one in 120, but we're kind of getting the math matter.
I'm going to bet you pops up one on all three dices.
And I'm going to pay you 30 cents a day to bet you that does on my $10,000 investment.
And that takes about 10 years to go through that 30 cents or whatever it is.
Now, believe it or not, sooner or later, all those three dice are going to show up all ones.
That's a black swan.
Don't know when has nothing to do with markets.
So what I do is we've already had a 36,7 Dow that's down to 31.
So that's 5,700.
What's that, 17%, 16% to 18%?
Okay, a lot of folks have taken a haircut.
I think the NASDAQ's down 30.
So this is a good place to where at least you've avoided the first 20 or 30%.
I think now I never pay attention to markets unless they go way up or they go way down.
This morning, before I came over here, I'm watching the markets because we're playing, I call it my blackjack money, you know, where I actually, I don't really, it's not enough money to watch a shotgun for the net worth, but it makes me feel like I'm doing something.
Okay.
And so we're buying, what we do is we buy on the way down.
So the old entry point was 35,000 Dow.
We feel, to your point, things are shakier.
Now our entry point is more like 32,000, 33,000.
The farther it goes down, the more I load up.
So it averages.
So one or two things last year.
Yeah.
So say you put in $2 million at $33,000 Dow.
At a $28,000 Dow, you may put in $20 million.
But you're going to pull that average down.
Now, if it runs back up, okay, your dividend stocks go up because they go up at the markets.
You got your dividends and you make money on your blackjack.
If it crashes, you kick it in the teeth with your black swan.
The only way to lose is if you have a death of a thousand small cuts where it goes what it's done now, 36, 35, 34, 32, 31, 30, 29.
We need a 10% either kick in the teeth or we need this to get back up to 40,000.
I think there's so much going on that's unknown, that's very dangerous, that the market should be sketchy.
But that makes rational sense.
Markets are never rational.
It's an emotional game.
And so you just got to know that.
It's an emotional game.
So I don't think I answered one bit of your question.
Well, you should run for office because I was like you simply gave answers on dollar cost average and a few different things, but nothing was ever answered.
Just out of curiosity, when you're looking at this, this story came out.
I'm curious to know how you're going to speculate this.
A record 19 million Americans asked the IRS for tax extensions.
Nearly one in eighth American asked the IRS for more time to file.
Here's what you need to know about the October 17 deadline.
When you read this, why do you think record-breaking 19 million Americans ask the IRS for tax extensions?
Is that a consistent number through time or is that a once?
No, this is the highest ever record.
We've never had 19 million Americans ask to extend their taxes with the IRS.
Well, you know, just shooting from the hip, I'd say that folks are thinking they're getting ready to get audited and then they're checking, you know, they're, you know, measuring three times going to cut once to make sure what they turn in is accurate.
I think they're asking for an extension so their accuracy of their tax return is something that they can't come back on.
That's how I read it.
How do you read it?
I actually wonder, like, why are people asking for tax extensions?
Is it because they overextended themselves and they don't have the money to pay what they're thinking they're going to owe?
Is it because they overspent?
Is it because it's pretty strange to have this kind of a number at a season like this?
Well, I'll give you a number that's kind of scary is that the normal GDP of the government to our GDP is about 15, 16%.
Last two years under COVID, it's been more like 30%.
So it's double.
So we got a little taste of socialism.
Socialism is when your DDP gets above 25, 30%.
That's when people get entitlements and they get a free lunch and they stop working.
So what the article was saying was a variety of factors is to blame beyond just procrastination.
Taxpayers say shifting due dates, COVID-related tax law changes, late forms, the IRS backlog, and taxpayer burnout.
Yeah, I actually think this is a byproduct of all that.
I'm one of these 19 million Americans, and this is basically why, if you recall, April of 20, they pushed back the tax deadline to, I don't remember when it was.
And then so everything got pushed back, pushed back, pushed back.
So that if your 20 got pushed back, your 21 will get pushed back.
So that's essentially what's happening right now.
It's like, all right, I'll just deal with it later.
There's no urgency to get that done.
And they kept pushing it back.
Just like student loan payments, it's the exact same thing.
Forbearance, forbearance, don't keep pushing it back.
You know this in any type of sale, there's two things that create a sale.
That's urgency and scarcity.
If you don't have to do it or if it's not running out, you just won't do it.
So I just don't think there's been any sense of urgency or scarcity to get this done.
That's just my two cents.
Yeah, but I mean, every year is the same when it comes down to that.
The only thing is.
Yes, but not since COVID because they kept pushing back the deadlines.
Got it.
If you're saying, hey, the homework's due on Friday.
Well, it's actually due next month.
It's fine.
When are you going to do your homework?
You're not going to do it this Friday.
All right.
Actually, by the way, we're going to actually, you have to the end of the year to do your homework.
You're never going to do your homework.
He used the word.
He didn't use the word fickle, but it was a word like fickle.
There's a lot of things going on in the market right now where it's tough to kind of predict what's going to be happening.
Here's another one from Yahoo Many yesterday.
Inflation, grocery prices in August rose 13.5%, the highest increase since March of 79.
That's not a small number, by the way.
13.5%, you know, that means if you spend, I don't know, $1,000 a month on grocery for your family, you got a family of four, husband, wife, two kids.
Now you're doing $1,350.
That's $113.
$113 of after-tax money is like $200 of pre-tax money.
Did people get a $200 raise?
Did people get a 13.5% raise?
I don't know.
So too many of these figures adding up, you know, it's making you kind of a, and by the way, did you see the other article about real estate property around the world?
How it's just dipping?
Did you see the chart that they had?
I sent it to you on Instagram.
If you pull it up, it's not that one, it's the other one.
If you go on Instagram, you'll see it.
Yeah, that's the one.
You can zoom in on that one.
Go ahead and zoom in on that one.
You can zoom in, zoom in, zoom in.
Look at that right there.
Go a little lower, Bloomberg, go a little lower, the other way, the other way, the other way.
Yeah, so there you go.
So the world's hottest housing markets are facing a painful reset.
Toronto's going up.
That's not really taking a hit.
It's showing from 2020 how much it's gone up.
Look at the number, by the way.
Toronto's gone up 45% just in two years.
45%.
Stockholm went up 35% and then it's dropped down to 20%.
Auckland went up 45% and it's dropped to 20%.
So it's dropped another 25% in the last six months or 10 months.
And Sydney went up 25% and it's now only up 15%.
So a lot of people right now, do you have any opinions on the real estate market?
Are you kind of, you know, you have any ideas of what you think is going to happen with all the inventory, the rates going up, how it's going to affect it?
Well, you know, back to the previous slide on the groceries.
I mean, you just got to look what people are doing.
And credit cards are blooming.
You know, they're maxed out right now.
Savings accounts are plummeting.
People are borrowing money to go to groceries.
So that's a pretty good indicator that the party's over.
You know, get out of the pool.
We're getting ready to wake up to reality.
My biggest concern through all this is inflation, yes, but deflation of real estate.
When you got houses that you're paying $250,000 and you've only had $250,000 and you had to put $20,000 down, and then all of a sudden that house is worth $180,000 and people just leave us with the keys.
The deflation thing could happen with housing, and that would be back to your old 708 bust.
So you think that's… It's possible.
Okay.
Okay.
So if that does happen, you know, 31 is not going to be the lowest for Dow.
You could be, you think we'll touch 25?
The interview I gave 14 months ago, 13 months ago, I was going to say, hey, you know, the game changer here is if they raise interest rates.
Guy kind of looked at me like I was crazy.
They say, start raising interest rates from, you know, zero or one or whatever it was.
Now, now, what's a six year, six percent on a 30-year mortgage?
They keep that up.
Yeah, 31 could be a nice number on the Dow.
31 could be a nice number on the Dow.
If they keep raising interest rates, I want to ask you a question since we're going in this deep finance rabbit hole.
I want to ask you a question on asset allocation.
You're a billionaire, worth a billion dollars.
Respect.
Without getting in the nitty-gritty, what percentage are you cash, stock, real estate, crypto, other type of investments?
Would you be willing to kind of give us the asset allocation balance?
I think the key with asset allocation is what makes you comfortable.
You know, we'll just start with, let's take $100,000.
Some people may want $100,000 cash.
I've literally had people that are buying bonds.
I'm like, bonds?
Really?
Been buying bonds for $100?
I got to even ask you about bonds, right?
You know, some people have 30%, 40% in precious metals.
I'm like, you know, if they blow it up, gold's not going to double or triple.
It's going to quadruple.
You don't need 30% of your portfolio.
But I think it depends on the person's, what makes them comfortable, really.
I mean, some people are worth $10 million and they live in a $500,000 house.
Some people are worth $10 million.
They live in a $20 million house.
That's what makes them comfortable.
But the one thing I've learned, I have three kids.
And, you know, when you talk about the kind of wealth we're talking about, it distorts reality.
It really does.
And it can mess their head up.
And it has that.
And like for all of us, the one thing I've learned with kids is dividend stocks teach them how much a million dollars is.
So if the child does have a million dollars in its trust, that's 50 grand a year.
They need to understand that's what a man, a million dollars, it's 50,000 bucks a year.
That's what it is.
No more, no less.
And that's the one thing that I've been able to do that whether they start off with $100,000 or $20,000, you know, $20,000 a year, $20,000 in the bank is $1,000 a year.
That's what it is.
You know, if you get up to $2 million, that's $100,000 a year.
So it does teach the kids the value.
That's the one thing.
It's the only thing mechanism I've, because they go, well, what's $5 million?
What's, you know, they think like that.
And it's like, five million.
Don't even, you know, I haven't given any of the kids anything close to $5 million or even $3 million.
I got one daughter that's 38.
Another one's 36.
My son's 24.
Until they show me they can manage the money.
And you feel bad because you want somebody to come along that kind of respects what you've done or at least appreciates it and at least is going to guard it.
But I was watching the Vanderbilts.
Cornelius Vanderbilt had 10 kids and left 95% of it.
But I think to William, none of the other nine kids can handle the wealth.
You know, told William, keep the wealth.
Well, so, you know, even out of 10 kids, he only had one that could handle, at the time, this was 1787, he had 100 million, which was, by the way, 124th of the GDP.
I mean, the GDP in 1887 was like 2.8 billion, and he had 100 million of it.
So one out of every $28 was his in the American.
Translated in today's money to the GDP today's what?
$124.
$4 trillion, so let's just say...
A trillion.
It's a trillion.
He's a trillionaire.
He's worth more than all the five other guys are.
Vanderbilt.
Yeah.
Damn.
He did ships and trains.
He was a bad guy.
He said.
Your kids are 38, 36, 24.
24.
You started young.
Yeah.
What do your kids do now?
My youngest likes computer.
He likes gaming.
The 24-year-old.
Yeah, he loves the gaming.
Did he go to college?
Went to college, didn't finish college.
He doesn't like college, doesn't like books.
Danielle.
So now he's just, does he have a job?
Yeah.
Works for Panda up in Detroit.
Okay.
Yeah.
Gaming.
Doing gaming.
He likes gaming.
That's great.
Place of content.
Let's play the games.
My middle daughter is an entrepreneur.
She likes urban products out of Utah.
And then my oldest daughter is an attorney, criminal attorney and a hard worker.
Loves criminal law.
Loves getting people out of binds when they've done bad things.
And self-sustained, they all work.
They don't.
They all work.
Okay.
But they don't know how to manage, sure don't know how to manage $5 million, much less $500 million.
Yet, it's early.
You believe in the whole concept that if you pass away, you give all of them a third, a third, a third, you leave it to them, or you believe more in the, you know, some J. Paul Getty.
He died very rich, but he only left his five kids a million a pop.
I think that's the number.
What's your philosophy on that?
I'm somewhere between a third, a third, a third, and zero, zero, zero.
I want to see some.
You don't want to give it away.
I want to see some demonstration that they respect and can handle the wealth.
They're going to do good deeds with it.
Otherwise, I'll find somebody else to give it to.
But would you, like, let's say your kids don't get any?
Hypothetical, where would the money go?
There's so many books out there that will tell you that all these trusts are scams.
I mean, these universities, I mean, you leave it to the university.
I mean, they'll really, all the universities are run by the left.
But I'd probably lean towards a private park and then I didn't doubt it where they, you know, they keep the park up and just tie it up so tight that they can't rip off the truss for it.
Papa John's Park and kids get free pizza every Friday like back in elementary school.
Let's go.
We've built two parks.
We built Ford's Fork out of Louisville and we've got a park in Anchorage.
And that's probably out of all the things I've done, that's the funnest of the parks I've built.
Yeah.
By the way, a quick update, just so you guys know, it was 323 when they called us, 353.
It's been 30 minutes.
No one's here yet.
What's about the timeline on when they deliver?
Is it you want to get there in 30 minutes?
So none of them have hit it yet.
Okay.
I'll tell you what.
Okay, let's go.
If you were still CEO of Papa John's, we'd have that pizza by now.
Pat would be soaked in garlic sauce at this point.
Okay, let's take a camera, hidden camera, and we go to family in the living room and they order pizza.
Okay.
30 minutes, somebody asks, where's the pizza?
30 minutes every single time.
41 minutes, they ask again.
At 44 minutes, people start to get pissed off.
At 54 minutes, what do you think they do at 54 minutes?
They're calling the store.
They round it up to an hour.
It's been an hour.
Not really an hour.
It's 54 minutes.
But they rounded up to an hour.
Oh, hell yeah.
So we're now between a little bit of agitation to moving the Bramade over to super pissed off.
So let's see how they do.
I love how you know the metrics and just the business.
Of course.
I mean, can you give a little insight?
He walked in, and by the way, thank you.
You brought some pizza for the production team.
They were very appreciative.
He brought the pizza?
Yeah, I believe so.
We ordered the pizza.
By the way, you know what is cool?
Just so you know, for the folks at Papa John's, if you're pissed off, he brought Papa John's pizza and he brought Jets.
Jet's pizza.
So it's not like he didn't bring, even though he's calling you out, he still brought a bunch of Papa John's pizza.
What he did out there was super impressive.
I'll give you the mic right now, but he went in and opened the box.
Everyone at Value Tainment got a masterclass in Pizza 101.
You see it here right here?
Cross hands at that.
All right, the sauce.
All right, but give us a little like your mindset when you saw this pizza.
Well, I've been consulting Jeff's now for three years, and Jets Pizza never left their quality and they never left their mission.
You know, they stuck to their knitting, and then they're people in their quality.
Papa John's, I've been on their case now for three years that, hey, you better stop playing games with your food quality and service.
You better make it the way the pizza was designed to make it.
You're going to get yourself in trouble.
And both things have come to fruition.
But I wanted to see Papa John's next to Jets because it really is reality.
They didn't know who was ordering it.
And two is if you watch the people, you don't make that.
Papa John's is a really good pizza if you make it right.
But if you don't have the right ingredients, you start slipping on those ingredients and you don't put it together right, it's a mediocre product.
I'll bet you go out there.
The Jets pizza is probably eating and they probably haven't eaten the Papa Jets.
I didn't want to offend you, man.
I saw the pizza popped.
I didn't realize how you were at.
I saw the Jets pizza and the Papa John's, I took a slice of the Jets.
Of course you did.
It was cross-hitches.
So has the name changed?
Who's first?
Who's first?
Pizza Hut was first.
Okay, Pizza Hut's first place.
Natalia!
How long did it take time?
223.58.
No, it's not.
You can't say 358.
It's 56.
355.
So they got here in 22 minutes.
Okay, set it up right in front of him because he's the expert here.
I thought we were going to do like a blind taste test thing.
No, we're not going to do that.
Okay, so we got Pizza Hut there.
Nobody else is here yet, Natalia.
Okay, all right.
Natalia, I vote for you to be the pizza gal.
You keep coming in and parade the pizza.
It's our Vanna White over here of pizza.
Okay, so we got Pizza Hut.
Took 32 minutes, is what it took.
By the way, is it fair to say that Papa John should change the name to Decent Ingredient, Decent Pizza Papa John?
Instead of better ingredient, better pizza.
By the way, how did you come up with the name Papa John?
You were a kid at the time.
Okay, I got the recipes, worked at Rockies, worked at Greeks, had the equipment, got all this in my brain on what's going to make a pizzeria.
Didn't have a name.
I'm in La Follette Dorm, 1982.
There's a doormate, a mate of mine, marketing major from Chicago.
I said, I got everything, but I don't have a name.
He comes back three days later with the logo and the name Papa John's.
Straight up.
That was it.
Dormate from La Follette Gym, 1982, Paul State.
So you never picked it.
You didn't come?
I didn't pick the name.
It was it.
He picked the name.
That was a buddy you lived with in the dormitory?
And I said, if it ever goes big.
Thanks, Hobby.
I said, if it ever goes big, I'll give you a pizza a week for the rest of your life.
He's never come forward.
He's never come forward.
You don't even know who he is.
No, if I was back in Papa John's, I would put out a $10 million reward.
Maybe not $10 million.
Let's do $500,000?
Whatever.
Something reward.
No, no, no.
$10 million.
I like that guy.
We're going to find this guy.
That sounds good to me.
Who came up with the name Papa Johns?
You don't even remember his name.
No, he was a friend.
He was a doormate.
But you don't remember his name.
You don't remember your roommate's name that had the front?
No, he didn't.
Adam, he didn't like school.
He just said it.
That's true.
He's busy.
There you go, Eric.
He's like his 24-year-old son.
I relate to that son.
Okay, so Pizza Huts first.
Are you surprised that Pizza Hut's first or no?
I mean, it's hit and miss in different markets.
Can we get some plates?
My concern with the big players, Papa John's, Domino's, and Little Caesars, is when you really don't put it together right and you have the right ingredients, all you've done is create a commodity.
And when you're a commodity, then you're chasing the rat hole down the Drain of Price.
And that's what you've got.
So right now, you know, Papa John's scores are at parody with Little Caesars on the ACSI award.
Papa John's scores are like 75, 74 the last two years.
Little Caesar's scores are like 70.
So Papa John's is that parody.
So you're going to say better ingredient, better pizza, turn around and sell a product that we saw out front, and then the consumer perceives you as a Little Caesars quality.
They're in a bad, it's a death spiral.
It's a black cloud.
They better get it.
They better get their acting and they'll get back to the product that made that brand great.
But Little Caesars, I feel, is by far and away the cheapest.
They have the full $5 hot and ready.
They are playing in a market like untouched.
How's that look, by the way?
This is actually, remember, the two things you got to have: ingredients in every bite, ingredients out to the edge.
Now, you've got an inch pretty well around that most of it.
That's a no-no.
And that Papa John pizza we saw earlier was, you know, two, three, four inches.
And the Jets, it was right to the edge.
So let's see how the other guys do.
But I, um, the pepperoni.
Yeah, this is a frozen crust.
This isn't a homemade crust, but this is Laprino cheese, which it's cheap.
It's about as cheap as you can get.
Pepperonis look okay, but I mean, I mean, it's pizza.
Why would you order that over frozen pizza?
I mean, there's nothing about that that's spectacular.
Why would you order that pizza hut over frozen pizza?
Why would you?
Look at that.
I mean, tell me why that's better than a frozen pizza.
Do you want to take a bite?
We're going to take a bite.
Now we got.
Who we got next?
Who's next?
Papa Johnson.
Oh, Papa Johns!
All right, Papa John.
All right, big Papa John.
So, Papa John, what was the time?
What time did he get here?
Two seconds ago.
Two seconds ago, so 4.23, 37 minutes.
We did have an issue that they didn't deliver in this area.
Hold on, Natalia.
I'm going to call another one.
Oh, so there's an issue that they didn't deliver to this area, so we had to call another one.
God, so that took another two or three minutes.
I got you.
Okay.
All right.
Cool.
So we got Papa John's.
How does that look to you when you see that?
These are better than the ones we order right off the bat.
But here's the.
Eric, you want to grab the mic so you can zoom in?
Because, folks, if you're watching this right now, let me tell you, this place smells like pizza, and it smells incredible.
Believe me, Eric wants to grab more than the mic.
He wants one of these guys.
So, if you look at the Papa John's versus the pizza, you can't really tell the difference.
If they weren't right next to each other, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
And the Papa John's has got a couple sins.
First of all, you got the coppings falling over the edge.
So, the reason we created the crust, we called it edge stretching, is so the crust would be able to dip it in the garlic sauce.
You've pretty well lost that luxury when you've covered it up.
It does have plenty of pepperonis on it.
It looks like it's got plenty of cheese.
You got an inconsistent bake.
But again, the thing that makes Papa John's Papa John's is a crust.
And we've gone from a hand-tossed dough to where they now do it with a machine.
So they actually place it down.
And so you lose that authentic, really, where the dough kind of rises.
But this still wouldn't be an eight pizza.
This would be probably a seven pizza.
Seven out of ten, you're saying.
Seven out of ten.
If it's not an eight, you're not supposed to serve it.
This product would be, it wouldn't be an eight either, but at least it's got toppings on it.
But again, you know, see, there's not toppings out to the edge.
But if I'd have been CEO and these would have come, this would have been a huge disappointment.
These would have been sub-7 pizzas.
Today, they're probably what I've seen at Papa John's the last 16 months.
These are actually some of the better ones I've seen.
But again, you're not going to be able to differentiate between a pizza hut and a Papa John's.
But let's see what the other two players come in at.
What about the works Pizza Hut one down over there?
Take a look at it.
By the way, you're not going to stop Pat from having some of that garlic sauce right there.
I already know where Pat's at.
Prepare it, like my eyes on the garlic.
Are there onions on this pizza?
Are there onions on this?
Pat, we're going to have an issue with this.
For John.
For John.
By the way, so you look at that and you look at this.
Now, some people like think rice, but what do you think about the way the pizza hut one looks?
I think the Papa John's in this case is demonstrably better.
The cheese is more moist because you got more toppings.
This pizza doesn't have much on it, considering it's supposed to be a works.
That is a works, yeah.
When you don't put as much on it, it dries out.
So, whereas these two pizzas are pretty well at parody, I'd say Papa John's is going to be a little bit better than the pizza because it's got slightly more cheese on it.
And they're prepared about the same level.
I'd say the Pizza Hut pizza is not nearly as good as the Papa John work pizza in this case.
So, Papa John beats Pizza Hut here.
No, in this particular case, one survey doesn't make a study, you know.
But the fact that you're being straight up, though, listen, so Pizza Hut against Papa John's on the works, Papa John's is winning so far.
But remember, this is the worst.
Pizza Hut's about the worst standard you could have.
Pizza Hut is the worst standard?
One of the best brands it was, but now their product quality has gone down actually more than Papa John's has gone down.
So, this is the horse race to the bottom.
It's a horse race to the bottom between these two players.
And what's their incentive for going down to the bottom to cut costs, labor, cut what?
See more money.
Stock options.
Stock options.
All the CEO, Rob Lynch, and this board care about is the share price.
What they don't understand is you keep doing this, and you're going to be at $10 a share.
Papa John's cannot keep doing this and expect to be at.
I think $85 a share should be free.
I'd short it.
I think it's a $60, $70 share.
It's a $60, $70 stock.
And then I would look at it real hard to make sure they got their act together.
Tell me one good thing that's happened since I left that company.
International is down the tubes.
Transactions, traffic are down the tubes.
Quality's down the tube.
They've lost best place to work.
They've lost ACSI, service stinks, image stinks.
Tell me one good thing that's happened to that company since I left.
Stocks less than when I left six years ago.
Who's the spokesperson now for them?
Shaq.
Okay.
Shaq.
Shaq's out there doing his thing.
Shaq's a good brand.
He's got a high-he's got a great QS score.
Q score.
He does have a great Q score.
I think he's a good ambassador if the product's good.
I think he now is putting his name on a bad product.
Yeah.
Like he, this new Shaq bowl that came out.
Yep.
The Shaq Pizza Bowl.
That's got more bad product reviews.
More people have been on the Shaq Bowl than any product they've ever put out.
They got more negative.
I don't think Shaquille is going to continue to put his name on.
You don't think?
I don't think he's going to continue to put his name on a fairy product.
Wow.
Okay.
I mean, that's not good for Papa John if that happens.
By the way, just so remember his score.
Just so you know, Pizza Hut, 32 minutes.
So fastest, not the best quality, but definitely fastest.
Papa John, 37 minutes.
Like they didn't cut this pizza.
They didn't cut the pizza?
They didn't cut the pizza.
If you're listening, can we get some napkins?
What do you mean they didn't cut the pizza?
They didn't cut the pizza?
Yeah.
I just roll it over.
Lazy.
So lazy cut.
I got it.
I got it.
Who were the other two that we're waiting for?
Dominoes.
Dominoes and Jets.
Dominoes and Jets.
Yep.
Can we get a napkin?
Yeah.
Hold on, hold on.
Okay.
We got this right here.
That's another thing I think they've done.
I think they've changed the, they've definitely changed the crust, but it doesn't taste the same.
I don't know if they changed the sauce, but something, something with the product doesn't taste like.
I got to tell you, I feel like we got to do something for our audience out there.
We got to do some sort of poll, some sort of lottery here, so we send them some pizza or something.
I feel like we got to do this for the people.
I don't know, Pat.
I'm just.
I'm a guy.
I'm a man of the people.
You know what I'm really concerned about?
23.
It's been 43 minutes.
It's been 43 minutes.
We're about to hit it.
We're about to make a phone call.
Well, Domino's, when I grew up, it was a half hour or less.
Tempted to.
What is it?
I would like to know what the audience, either favorite pizza, who they go to.
Do we do a poll?
I'd love to send some pizza to someone out there.
I don't know.
Pat, you're the boss here.
I'm just, I only work here.
I only make the pizza here.
You're going to send it to me.
It's going to be if they're local, come by.
We'll get it.
No, what do you mean?
We can send it to wherever they're at.
Okay.
So are you impressed or no?
The one from Papa John.
It doesn't taste like the original pizza.
They've changed the recipe.
They've done something.
I don't know exactly what they've done.
I know they changed the dough recipe so they could make it softer to spin it out with the machine.
But that doesn't taste like our sauce.
So I don't know if they went to a paste sauce or if they put something else in there, but it does not taste like the original recipe.
In my opinion, this actually, these two are parody with taste.
You know, just a question of, you know, they taste a little bit different, but not that much.
But, you know, that zingy sweet sauce that always made Papa John, Papa John's.
Do you know what I'm talking about?
Yeah, of course.
Yeah, well, I'll let you try.
I'm going to try.
Let me ask you: Papa John's used to have the garlic sauce, but then there was like a cheese sauce at some point.
Wasn't there another sauce?
Here.
We have both.
Okay, so this one's Papa John's.
I'm going to give this a shot.
Okay.
Would you consider that cut or no?
Not really.
Let's see who's next.
Somebody's coming in.
Oh, just pizza.
So Domino's is last.
They won't deliver.
What do you mean?
Domino won't deliver?
When's the last time?
What do you mean?
Pizza.
We called three different pizza.
With Papa John.
And none of the dominoes that are in our vicinity to this building.
Wait, what?
The audience has to be able to see.
None of the three dominoes in the area refused to see the past.
So which dominoes, what cities were these in?
The dominoes you called?
You said Vero Beach.
I'll lower him a little bit, guys.
He's a little too loud.
But yeah, we called three in a proximity of our area.
None of them offered delivery to our address.
We even went online to double check, and they won't come.
How far was it?
Three miles.
Yeah, there's one literally nine minutes down the road.
And they said they don't deliver it?
Will not deliver it.
Well, Domino's, this is not good for you.
So, what you just did, we're not going to be able to get a chance to maybe that's a good thing.
Taste test them.
By the way, John, I don't want to offend you.
You are absolutely right.
It's hard to even get the slice out over here.
It's falling apart.
It's not cut well.
This would not happen on your Papa John's pizza.
Well, that's why you got to measure what they're doing because they won't cut it.
They won't bake it.
And then the franchisees, I love them to death.
But you're talking about successful entrepreneurs, they don't whine.
Franchisees, they complain.
But they'll make the product wrong, cook it wrong, cut it wrong, and then blame it on a marketing or blame it on technology.
I mean, it's unbelievable.
You've got to measure what the franchisees are doing because if you're not weighing them every day and making sure they're on their game, they'll slouch.
So what do you think about Jets' pizza that just came in?
It's still a lot hot.
He wants some Jets.
Got to tell you, it's a pretty big, pretty good.
First time we're eating something on a podcast.
Pat, how are you feeling about the sauce?
To me, I'm heaven on earth, but he's the expert.
I want to see what Pizza Hut is.
No.
This ain't doing it for me.
It's not doing it, which one is it?
This was the Papa John's.
This is not the Papa John's I'm used to.
I don't know what they've changed.
Something's different.
Yeah.
Straight up.
When you got a winner, I don't know why you change it.
Which one's Jets?
Okay, let me see the Jets works.
Just grab a slice for me.
I'm all good.
I was in the military.
Just grab me a slice.
Rob Garjulo, can you grab us some napkins, buddy?
All right.
Oh, interesting.
So different, very different Adam.
Yes, sir.
Thanks, PBD.
Bye.
It works.
Let's see here.
Jets are super hot.
It's hotter because it's real.
They make their dough in the store.
I think Pizza Hut is a frozen dough.
Papa John's has got the machine press in it out.
And then also Jets, that's fresh-packed sauce.
That's why it's a little bit more robust.
I think Jet sauce is really good.
I don't think it's as good as Papa John's.
when Papa John's is Papa John's, but that didn't taste like Papa John's to me.
This place smells like pizza.
Kai, grab a slice, Kai.
I'm waiting for the pepperoni over here.
Grab a slice, Kai.
Come grab a slice.
Come on.
Come on.
Everybody, Natalia, everybody wants you to grab a slice for whatever reason in the comment section.
They love to call you.
Here's what I think.
I think if the Papa John pizza was made the way it was supposed to be made with the ingredients that it's supposed to be made with, I think it would hands down, it would kill the pizza pizza.
And my gut is it would round pizza is not as good as its pan.
But Papa John's round pizza is better than Jets' round pizza.
But in this case, Jets is better because they're not making it right or they stopped doing something, made it differently.
But I think if that Papa John pizza was made the way we used to make it, it would clean this Jets pizza's clock.
It's not made the way it used to be made, so I think this is a little bit better.
The pizza works.
There's nothing on it.
It's dry.
It's no good.
I think the Papa John works.
It's definitely better than the Pizza Hut.
And then I think the Jets has a little bit more toppings.
and a little bit more wholesome.
I'd say it's slightly better than the Papa John's because they change the crust, they change the sauce, but I'd give Jets number one.
I give Papa John's two on the works, and I give Papa John's and Pizza at a two on the pepperoni.
And then I give pizza at a third on the works pizza.
So for me, works is last.
You know.
We pass over that Pizza Hut pepperoni so we can hand it over this way and get it to Kai.
Thank you, sir.
What are you ranking?
The best slice I've had so far was the original slice that we had out there.
From?
Was that Jets as well?
The pan?
Jets.
That was awesome.
Jets has a fantastic pan pizza.
We got the round pizza.
I don't think the round pizza is as good as Papa John's.
When Papa John's is made right, in this case, Papa John's was made right.
So I think that Jets is a little better.
Okay.
All right.
Well, listen, Domino's, you had a chance.
So here's what we learned.
If speed is the fastest, Pizza Hut one, 32 minutes.
Papa John's was 37 minutes.
Jets was third.
And then Domino's, we call three different places.
They don't deliver, even though the closest one is three miles away.
What's the criteria of how close?
Is it like, do you give it to somebody and then somebody else cannot have a Papa John's within a 10-mile radius?
What's the structure?
Yeah, great question.
We do a seven-mile delivery time.
Seven miles.
Seven minutes.
We like go seven, eight minutes.
So you do it by drive times.
So you may have downtown New York where you literally can drive five minutes and you have three main people.
Or you may go in Bedford, Indiana, and you may be able to go 10 miles in 10 minutes.
But it's a population drive time equation that you look at.
Not miles.
Totally makes sense.
When somebody orders a pizza, how quickly is it made?
And how long is it too long to be sitting there?
When you're running the Papa John store, everything's six-minute intervals.
You want it made in six minutes, you want it baked in six minutes, and you went out the door in six minutes.
Sure.
And you know, try to get to the door in six minutes plus the delivery time.
So anyway, a little cushion there, you're at 30 minutes.
So it's a lifestyle and a mindset in a game of six, seven minutes.
Six, The dough.
Interesting.
And if you were to make a pizza and you can pick between what's most important, the dough, the sauce, or the toppings, where if you had to have one of them needs to be grade A and then like secondary and then third, what would be the most important in order to like save the taste of the pizza as much as possible?
40% of your flavor comes from the tomato sauce.
Your cheese is really like a copper wire.
It's a conductor.
It's just a medium for the flavor to kind of go through.
And to talk out of both sides of my mouth, the dough is really the key.
So I have actually a pizza stone in my backyard, a pizza oven.
It gets up to six, 700 degrees.
And what I'll do is I'll go get dough from Papa John's, dough from Jets, and then sauce from each of them and just play.
But I think the Jets pan dough with Papa John's sauce, and then this pizza that you just saw at Jets, that's Grande.
This is Grande cheese.
It's a thicker, chewier cheese.
This is going to be $2.80 a pound, whereas Papa John cheese is going to be $1.80 a pound.
This is Laprino.
Is a lot cheaper.
So if I could have a combination, if I could have jets Pando, Papa John sauce and a combination of librino cheese with a little grande cheese, you're home perfect, you're home to start a business.
What are the chances?
What are the chances?
PAPA John's franchisees and board is watching this last part of the clip and they're sitting there saying guys, did you hear what Papa, what he said?
He said he recommended this.
What are the chances they're gonna actually implement the recommendation you're giving the 280 cheese, the sauce?
What's the chances?
I wrote the book on how to do this, a book it's called pop-up, and they can't even read the book.
You know, I can tell you what they can't.
I mean they can't, you could.
How do you get healthy, troll?
You eat right and you exercise.
They don't do it.
It would take where's that PAPA JOHN pizza at?
It would take.
It would take 12 to 16 months of going back in and keeping my hand on their shoulder, 12 to 18 months to get them back.
It take it.
You don't.
When you're selling a million pizzas a day and you got 5,000 stores and they're all over, they're just out of shape.
The the amount of fortitude and exertion and energy on my part to get them back in shape would take a year every day on their case.
No no, I don't hear about marketing, I don't hear about technology.
I want to know why you're, why we're not making the product the way it's supposed to be made.
The pizza, the pizza it's.
As my farmer friend says at Modesto, it's the food.
Stupid economy, stupid.
There's a lot of serious.
Can I just give a quick shout out?
This kid over here, this guy Kai.
By the way, he hasn't been on the podcast in I don't know the last time.
He's a little bit.
So yeah, he's, usually he's.
You know we love this guy, this guy, every weekend he makes his own pizza.
That's his thing for years now.
No, it's been a lot of years.
Your permission to speak.
Now, go ahead, speak what you got.
No, I dove from scratch everything.
So it's been uh, it's been fun.
Well, I've got uh, I've got, a pizza oven in my house in Kentucky.
The columns that hold it up are 1700 years old, back to the Emperor Constantine out of the Roman Empire.
That's crazy.
So anytime you guys want to come, when you all come see me in Kentucky, bring Kai and we'll make pizzas out.
You can film your show.
Listen, you can film your show from a the back my backyard and have the time of your life making pizza.
With all due respect uh, i'm gonna let them go to Kentucky.
I was recently invited to uh eastern Europe with Andrew Tate to go visit him in Romania.
So after that trip i'll maybe i'll come to Kentucky, but that's first on my list, so Kai can go get some pizza with those guys Kentucky.
I lived in Kentucky two years, so I I I would actually entertain that thought.
That'd be great.
Thank you for the invite.
Uh, appreciate you for coming out.
Uh, this was great.
This is the first time we've done uh something like this, and this decision was made last second.
By the way I walked in, I seem all the ordering pizza.
I'm like, oh yo okay, if we ordered, he was, you know, enough of a sport to do this.
And uh, once again, thanks for coming out.
Thanks for sharing your story.
Uh, any crazy projects you're working on right now?
You haven't found that business yet we're working on, We're working on Papa's Farms, organic farm, no fertilizers, no chemicals, little beehives and bee farms.
So we're having some fun with Papa Farms, doing a lot of things on nutrition.
Just got involved with a company called Wild Health, which is genomics, testing your DNA.
But having a lot of fun in the health field, but I'll come back on when I get something that I really can get my teeth into and share with you.
But I appreciate y'all having you look great, man.
I got to tell you, the last picture I saw of you, I was like, oh, I hope he's doing okay.
