Profiles

YoungBiz looks at John Schnatter, the founder and CEO of Papa John's Pizza.

Check out Papa John's stock here: PZZA

How many times have you ordered a pizza? Probably more than a few. How many times was it a Papa John’s Pizza? For growing numbers of people, Papa John's is the pizza of choice. Papa John’s Pizza is a restaurant chain with almost 2100 restaurants in 47 states and the District of Columbia. The company opened its first international restaurant in Mexico City in July 1998, and they expect to have 2300 restaurants open worldwide by the year 2001.

The man with the vision behind Papa John’s is John Schnatter, a 35-year-old guy from Jeffersonville, IN. Always a driven young man, John worked part-time in a variety of pizza shops during college at Ball State University in Muncie, IN, where he graduated in three years. 

At the young age of 23 and with $1,600 in cash, John opened up his first pizza stand in a converted broom closet in the back his dad’s struggling bar. His pizza became an immediate hit, selling 300-400 pies a week. One year later, John opened his first Papa John’s restaurant. He grew to four stores in two years and 23 stores in five years.

Schnatter believes that the key to Papa John’s success is the quality of the pizzas: "Concentrate on what you do well, and do it better than anybody else." As its competitors branch out into different products such as wings, sandwiches, and pastas, Papa John’s is determined to limit its menu to pizza, breadsticks, and cheesesticks. To maintain the quality of the company's product, the crust of every Papa John’s pizza is made with fresh dough prepared daily with clear filtered water in the company’s regional commissaries. John believes that if his company can concentrate on making the perfect pizza everything else will take care of itself and they will be successful in the long run. 

He seems to have done a pretty good job so far. The company was named "Best Pizza Chain in America" in the prestigious Restaurants & Institutions’ Choice in Chains for both 1997 & 1998. The company is currently opening approximately one store a day in the United States and has a market capitalization of almost $1.23 billion. John Schnatter owns 32% of the company, worth approximately $400 million. Not bad for a guy who started out making pizzas in a broom closet.