PAPA JOHN’S PIZZA Franchise Complaints

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• The worst franchise one can buy. No support from headquarters. You are left on your own. Senior managememt are too preoccupied with beating Dominos that they lost their sense of reality of what goes on in the stores. Zero support from corporate office when your store is struggling. All they care about are corporate stores that they own. They milk you on high food costs and various fees to the point that you barely break even, if that. Make sure you talk to franchisees before thinking of throwing your money in this franchise. Many have lost their entire hard earned life savings on this failing brand. Lots of Stores are either closing or being converted to other pizza chains.

• Agree with everything Renee said. Corporate is so consumed with stock price they have hung the franchisees out to dry. I the last few years they have destroyed the papa John's brand. All they care about is more transactions and higher sales. The problem is if the higher sales and more transactions have a smaller profit margin then the only one it benefits is the Corp.

  Sales up 30% in the last 5 years expenses down (not from anything Corp did, but things I cut out which jave caused more work for me) over $10000 and financially not significantly any better. Every decision Corp cost me more $. Somehow they convinced franchisees to raise the national advertising % and guess what, sales are down nationally. Totally incompetent at Corp level!

  Really believed in the brand, which is why I bought. Had experience in several other brands but choose papa John's. Regretting that decision. Until they fix the problems at Corporate level STAY AWAY!

• Last week I ordered a sausage/pepperoni pizza and an order of buffalo wings. The driver was late. The pizza and wings were cold. I called the manager who informed that it would be another hour before they could place my order. The driver would pick up the food and give me another orderer that is hot. I am hungry for waiting and they tell me another hour. I was so hungry that I had to make it to my microwave to warm the food up. I should not have had to warm up my food. The food should be ready to eat upon arrival. I am very disappointed in Papa John's treating me as a customer like this. This Papa John's located on Laburnum {East). Richmond VA

• I am a business broker. My company rep5resents franchisees all over the country. We recently listed a couple of Papa Johns franchise in Southeast and Northeast, I will keep locations confidential for now as we are hoping to have a change in the situation. So the stores are doing very well. They are profitable and numbers are good. We have brought two buyers with money but PJ has refused to approve either of them. The owners are stuck wanting to sell and make some money back but are not able to. Has anyone else experienced anything similar with PJ and an attempt to sell?

• Do not be fooled into buying a Papa John's franchise.

  I couldn't help but laugh at the message by "Will Steel" (ironic name) that a store that is making a lot of money has been put up for sale. If it is making a lot of money a smart owner would not sell.

  Either way, this franchise company is dead! I am telling you as a franchise owner. Put things into perspective: a franchisee in Washington State has put up 19 of his stores for sale in an auction!! Many more stores on the West Coast have either closed or converted to something else. Reason is that the brand simply sucks.

  The pizza simply is bland in taste and I get a lot of complaints from customers about the taste of the sauce and the gooey bread. As an owner you will get screwed trying to find staff who can make the dough in the store. You are at a disadvantage over Dominos as in Papa John's you have to time slapping the damn dough while other franchise store have an easier dough preparation process.

  Then on top of that corporate will screw you on food cost and various "fees". With rising rent across the country and labor, you will struggle big time. No support from corporate at all. Most of the regional managers are idiots with no real business sense. The CEO of the company (Steve Richie) is not educated in business. The guy simply worked for the company as a driver all the way up to franchise manager. But no business training!

  Same goes with most other management level personnel. Meanwhile the competition has sound managers who are well versed in business. Don't throw your hard earned money away!! As Rene suggested do a thorough research on the store you want to buy.

  This company is a sinking ship with sales dropping each year.

• i have no context on papa johns, but as to frank dreuiters comment above regarding him laughing at the idea of someone selling a business that makes a lot of money, people sell highly profitable businesses all the time for many reasons.

• I second what DeRuiter said. 99% of the time an owner will want to get rid of a or several stores if: 1- stores are doing poirly in sales 2- store will be doing poorly in sales in future due to forecast. Yes some sell because of health reasons but use your judgement. If you store was making great profit why sell?? You can keep it! Its not like you work in it. Even if you do work in it you can hire a good manager if it makes money.

  About Papa Johns, the company sales are down. I like in Seattle as a business broker and a franchisee with 19 stores went bankrupt. Apparently the company is in trouble from top down. The owner apparently blamed some of his problems on regional corporate management and the franchise business director. Seems they are all useless.

• Once again, there are numerous reasons other than failing health to sell a profitable company, including:
  -Defined business strategy, ie build value and cash flow for 2 years and then sell. the math can def be favorable under this scenario. consider the following:
  -300k startup cost
  -20/80 equity to debt
  -Cash on cash sixty thousand
  -Cummalitive cash flow over 2 years 200k
  -sale price five hundred thousand
  -Total return 700k over 2 years minus 60k cash out of pocket, 640k real return
  - debt on company assumed by buyer
  -In order to generate 640k in returns operating the business, the owner would need to maintain cash flow for approx 5 additional years.

  another reason to sell a profitable business is someone wants to monetize and go into another industry or market, has concerns about long term trends of some type, wants to retire, issues with partners, financial pressure from other debts, divorce, upcoming lease issues, tax problems, inherited money, etc. The reasons are endless.
  Some of the business analysis I see on this site makes it pretty clear why there are so many failed franchisees

• If you store was making great profit why sell?? You can keep it! Its not like you work in it. Even if you do work in it you can hire a good manager if it makes money.

  I also want to point out that statements like the quoted one here reflect a deeper issue, which, to be frank, is that many failed franchise owners had no business going into business to begin with. There seem to be a lot of franchise owners who cash in home equity, 401ks, etc and are convinced by sleazy franchise sales people and brokers (like kim marinoff) that they can just "hire a manager" who will proceed to build them a successful business. Its a dangerous perception that experienced small business entrepreneurs know to be false

• Eric

  Irregardless of what you say about reselling franchise businesses, fact is that Papa Johns as a brand has failed. When you have so many franchise store closing and or struggling there are issues.

  And yes some profitable stores might be put ip for sale but vast majority are ones that have “issues”.

  Again this thread is not about buying or selling franchise stores, its about warning potential start up investors about a crappy brand like Papa Johns. Simply google Papa Johns and read what experts ate saying about how poorly this brand is doing.