Papa Johns is the latest pizza chain to close hundreds of locations following a tough quarter as customers pull back on spending.
The company revealed during Thursday’s earnings call that approximately 300 underperforming restaurants in North America will close by the end of 2027, with about 200 of them shuttering this year.
The affected restaurants are those “not meeting brand expectations or lack a clear path to sustainable financial improvement, as well as locations where we can effectively transfer sales to a nearby restaurant,” said Ravi Thanawala, Papa Johns chief financial officer and president of the chain’s North America operations.
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It’s a crime they had 300 locations to close.
I agree with other people here recommending Little Ceasars instead!
ALWAYS order from a family owned pizza shop. The pizza will be far better, and youre helping a working family instead of a MAGA mega-corp.
Or just make your own at home.
Everything about papa johns is terrible. I remember when they were supposed to give their employees health insurance but instead they cut everyone’s hours so they didn’t have to because it would have cost them the equivalent of 1 millions pizzas then they ran a promo giving away 2 million pizzas. They were the first chain to charge a delivery fee but not give it to the drivers. The founder was basically a klan member and such a shitty person. Only thing I like about them was the garlic butter dipping sauce they gave.
Y’all were cheap and palatable 20 years ago when I always had a half-off coupon for an XL pie and your owner wasn’t publicly a massive bigot
Rest In Piss
Little Caesars and Hungry Howies are better options and cheaper.
I never buy pizza from someone who’s first language is not italian.
Caesar was from Rome
The first is gas station level quality, and th second is entirely unfamiliar to me. How about I just make my own, or order from a local restaurant instead?
gas station level quality
I won’t take this gas station pizza slander! Casey’s, a regional gas station franchise in the central US, is better than pretty much every national pizza chain.
Remind me where I’ve driven past a Casey’s
IIRC, Mr Papa John has long since left the company and Shaq took over.
Their pizza still sucks though.
Blackrock Inc. owns the most shares in Papa John’s. Shaq just owns around a dozen franchises in the Atlanta area and was on the Board of Directors until he stepped down in 2024.
I actually enjoyed their pizza but refused to buy it after the papa showed his true colors.
Shaq should rebrand.
Shaq didn’t join to make the pizza better; he just makes it look shorter.
I mean, they used to be decent like 30 years ago. Never great, but decent, and cheap. Now they suuuuck, I don’t know what fuckin’ voodoo they use to make their crust eat more like a crappy biscuit than pizza dough, but boy they do it. Make your own pizza at home. I make a fantastic 16" and it costs about $2.80. Fuck this delivery pizza that tastes like cardboard and ass for $30 bullshit.
That looks like some fucking good pizza.
Well done.
Almost like cutting corners to make your product barely edible makes them stop buying it. Who could have seen that outcome!?!
That looks delicious! Recipe?
Pizza Sauce:
28oz can of San Marzano whole peeled tomatoes with basil
3 tbs tomato paste
1 tbs extra virgin olive oil
1 1/2 tsp sea saltCheese:
8 oz part skim mozzarella cheese, gratedTopping:
Dried oregano
Garlic salt/butterYeast:
60 g lukewarm water
1/4 tsp active dry yeast
1 tsp sugarDough:
8 oz (227g) bread flour
1 tsp vegetable oil
1/2 tsp sugar
90 g water
yeast mixture from above
1/2 tsp sea saltDirections
Stir yeast ingredients, allow to foam (5-10 minutes). Mix all dough ingredients (minus the salt) plus yeast mixture in stand mixer with dough hook Knead 15 minutes, adding salt in about halfway through
Let sit for 15 minutes, covered
Do a final knead: 4 minutes
Round dough
Cover, allow to sit to rise for 1 hour, covered
Push down dough and round again
Cover and allow a final rise for 1 hour (or put in the fridge for slow overnight rise)Put pizza stone in oven on bottom rack. Heat up oven to 550F, allow it to sit for 30 minutes with the stone in it at this temp.
Stretch dough to about 16" and place on a peel dusted with corn meal
Apply sauce, cheese and a sprinkling of dried oregano. Apply melted butter with garlic salt on the crust with a pastry brushShimmy the peel to make sure the pizza is loose
Shimmy the pizza onto the hot pizza stone
Should cook in under 10 minutes. When it starts to get brown, switch to the broiler on high to finish off
I don’t think I’ve had Papa John’s since like 2006. They’re consistently the most expensive fast food pizza and the quality has always been below average. Don’t see the point in them
They’re fairly reasonable by me if you get the deals. Still shit pizza tho, and your money is going to the guy who was dropping N bombs a few years back
I just checked and a standard large pepperoni for delivery is over $20 before tipping the driver. Gee, I wonder why no one is ordering?
5.50 delivery fee.
A fee they pay for a tipped employee likely not making minimum wage.
You’re paying them a fee to pay someone else less than minimum wage to drive it to you. They’re forcing you to tip the company.
And you still have to tip the driver (which I don’t mind). Also, where I live it was close to $10 5 years ago.
Fuck any companies that do this. Let alone for crappy PJ’s pizza.
My guess is they don’t even pay a driver or liability. I assume they just contract to a dasher so if anything goes wrong, Papa just points his finger at Übermensch.
Look, buy what you want, I don’t care for Papa John, but the thing is this: People are resistant to higher prices, and yet inflation has existed (nevermind that our wages haven’t risen to keep up).
These delivery fees are to help make up for that inflation. People won’t buy the higher price pizza, so you gotta get the money in somehow.
If you track pizza prices from 20-30 years ago, you’re paying - generally speaking - around the same, give or take. And in fact, if you get the average “carryout” deal, you’re paying less.
So it sucks, but that’s why they play these games.
The last time I purchased a PJ pizza it was $9.99.
And it still wasn’t worth it. Super low quality crap.
I worked at Laser Quest for years and there was a PJ’s in the parking lot. When we would order birthday pizzas, they would always bring us a staff pie, usually cheese. Super nice gesture but after a few months I couldn’t even look at their pies, for years after I quit, without mentally tasting that cup of garlic grease and pepperoncini. 🤢🤮
that cup of garlic grease and pepperoncini
Came here looking to the first references to these two items
For love and for hate, for addiction and for shame
…in yeast, we feast. Amen.
You didn’t use the two-for-one coupon?
Didn’t need two. I prefer the bachelor life.
One for today, one for tomorrow. Y’all gotta learn to plan ahead.
Double the crap is still crap. :)
Food > none food, when you’re poor
You better not be paying those prices if you’re poor. You could make 8 pizzas for that price. That’s just bad budgeting.
I never get over how enormous these companies are. Closing 300? How many are left?
Google says 5,500 worldwide. 3500ish in ‘Merica
The article says 3,500 locations, so I’m going to go out on a limb and say roughly 3,200-ish left. Give or take.
Good. My absolute last choice for pizza. I’ll take little Caesars every day off the week. I’ll take a fucking frozen Jack’s pizza before Papa John’s
Little Caesars is not the most amazing pizza by a long shot, but for the price? Man, being able to feed two people for like seven bucks with food from “out” is just about not doable anywhere else. When it’s fresh, it’s quite acceptably decent.
When we want good pizza, it’s down to local places. There’s several chains I’ll eat fine, but the best stuff is local - not every place, mind. Lots of places are meh. The best place near us - best deal was an 18" cheese for $25ish. That’s still four meals especially if you have a little salad or something, so not bad on the price - an the sauce and dough and cheese were all amazing, which is what you really need for a good pizza.
I don’t like cheese pizza from most places - you need toppings to make it. But you know you’ve found a great place if you have the cheese pizza and you don’t want any toppings getting in the way. heh
I dont understand. Their pizza tastes so good! Why… sorry. Couldn’t say it with a straight face
The economy is getting worse and worse, people are living paycheck to paycheck. Eating out simply isn’t in the budget for many of us the way it used to be. Never mind Papa Johns is on the BDS list and there are plenty of other (better imo) places to get pizza.
and john snotter is such a nice upstanding guy…
I can make a 12" pan pizza that blows these chain pizzas out of the water for around $5. Come back to me once you can compete with that.
recipe/tips?
Dough (makes 3 pizzas in 12" skillet)
- 4.25 cups Bread Flour = $0.93
- 2.25 tsp Rapid-rise Yeast = $1.00
- 1.5 tsp Salt = $0.02
- 2 tbsp Extra Virgin Olive Oil = $0.36
- 1.75 cup Warm (115F) Water = Free
Total = $2.31
This dough recipe is for 3 pizzas in an 12" skillet. Mix all the dry ingredients, then mix in oil, then slowly mix in water. Knead for 10 min or stand mix for 5. Oil a large bowl and let dough rise covered until doubled 60-90min in a warm place. Dump dough onto a lightly floured surface and divide into 3 pieces.
Preheat oven 450F. In a cast iron skillet coat the bottom in olive oil then spread dough out to edges. If the dough want to contract a lot, let it rest for 5 min then press it out again. Cover with sauce, cheese and toppings
Bake for ~23 min until the cheese is melted and golden.
Take the skillet out of the oven and trace the edges with a knife to free the cheese edge. Then turn on a burner to medium and cook the bottom for around 5 minutes to develop an extra crispy bottom.
Finally, some good news!
I haven’t ordered Papa Johns in so long… I used to order delivery pizzas from another local small chain though. It was great for years, but one day I got a text from Uber right after I placed my order informing me that they’d be delivering my pizza. An hour and a half later, I received a cold pizza from an apathetic uber driver who had to waddle up my driveway. Never again…
I’d consider Papa Johns if they still had their own delivery staff. Maybe I’ll check them out again UGH
Can someone explain if this is going to be common? The poverty line is just going to go up indefinitely so will this just be the normal? Like a normal trend for companies that sell something mediocre overpriced.
Likely. A lot of consumer facing companies have issued warnings that working and middle class spending is cratering because people don’t have money to spend. I won’t be surprised if a lot of fast food restaurants go under or at least shrink considerably due to a collapse in market demand.
If anybody DOES explain whether it’s going to be common, take that person’s words with an appropriately large amount of skepticism. At the end of the day, “common” is a pretty ambiguous and subjective qualifier, and no matter how smart someone is, they aren’t psychic.
From a near(ish) term perspective: The USA is said to be experiencing a K-shaped economic recovery, and to some degree, the economy is bifurcating.
One simplistic way of viewing this is: Businesses that resonate with upper middle class and higher income consumers are, by and large, doing quite well. Businesses that can operate on low margins (often b/c of operating on enormous scale, ability to race to the bottom or already there, limited/no ethical principles, etc) are doing okay.
For everything else, it’s volatile. In my opinion, a lot of this is due to unprecedented, senseless, and chaotic federal polices that are unpredictable and occurring at a pace too frenzied for all but the nimblest or luckiest (well-positioned) businesses to successfully adapt without a lot of pain.
A lot of these middle ground establishments won’t survive if they don’t change, navigating that change is hard. They’ll have to join the race to the bottom, be lucky, get bought out, partake in massive layoffs/closures, and things like that.
So, from that perspective, I would expect to see this happen more often than before to former big and recognizable names.
If by some chance there is a massive shift in federal policy sometime soon, that could obviously alleviate some of this. Hard to say though, the damage may already be done or worse things may be on the horizon (remember how COVID went down?).
Thing is, Papa John’s is WAY overpriced. Last time I got a pizza there it was over $30.
So PJ’s isn’t exactly for “lower income”.
Little Caesars is 1/3 the price and not really a lesser pizza. PJ’s just ain’t that good.
My local joint sells a pizza that’s 10x better than PJ’s for $20.
Then PJ’s tacked on major delivery fees to boot. Fuck em.
