Go woke, go broke isn’t just confined to media and tech companies that get financially hammered after going woke in a ridiculous way and infuriating their consumer base. Though that’s the most frequent time the saying crops up, as recently has happened with Netflix, for example, it can apply to all manner of companies.
In fact, even companies that make and deliver pizza on a massive scale can apparently start suffering the financial consequences of moving away from traditional, conservative values, and adopting the current thing as their mantra.
Such is what has apparently happened to Papa John’s, one of the main fast-food pizza chains. According to the company’s former CEO, it has gone all in on PR and ditched what used to make it operationally excellent, leading to it losing its way and suffering the consequences.
Speaking on that, former Papa John’s CEO John Schnatter said: “I think they’ve really lost their way. It used to be an operational-driven company. Now it’s a lawyer, PR-driven company. They don’t run their company on principles and values.
Continuing, Mr. Schnatter noted that Papa John’s is facing a steep decline in its business with him gone, saying, “They’re losing traffic, they’re losing customers. I think the traffic count’s less than what it was when I was there six years ago. Over 40% of the stores are losing money.”
Then, Schnatter went on to claim that while Papa John’s was voted as having “the highest quality in the pizza category” 18 times in 19 years on the American Customer Satisfaction Index during his leadership, “They now are down with Little Caesar’s, so the thing has really got away from them.” And why is the company doing poorly? As he put it, “If you don’t have that quality, you don’t have that service, and you don’t have that culture, you’re asking for, you know, a bad day at the office.”
But it’s not just operational excellence that the pizza giant has drifted away from. It also used to have conservative values, values that have fallen by the wayside after Schnatter was forced out of the company. Speaking on that, he said: “We used to say the pledge of allegiance to the country before meetings. We ran our business on principles. We had the highest quality, we had the best service, we had the best culture, we were voted the best place to work in Kentucky.
He also explained why he thinks he was targeted by cancel culture, saying, “Papa John’s debunked every single element on the Left’s ideology, so unbeknownst to me, I had a giant target on my back just by being the American dream and the folks around me living the American dream.”
Schnatter, who describes himself as a victim of cancel culture, was forced out of his company for using a racial slur during a conference call. With him went the company’s culture, apparently, and so too have gone its profits and the likelihood that consumers will want to order from it.
