Ringing the Bell

If you read the story on the Papa John’s website, you know the company’s first location was actually an old broom closet in the back of a small tavern in Jeffersonville, IN. Most people probably didn’t look at 22-year-old John Schnatter in those days and think he would be a great success. However, he has learned a lot about running good restaurants as the years went by. He must have been a fast learner, because the company went public within eight years!

Guess what John did when he opened his 3,000th Papa John’s restaurant? Click here (http://www.nasdaq.com/reference/200507/market_open_071305.stm) to see more photos of John Schnatter ringing the opening bell for the NASDAQ stock exchange on July 11, 2005. (He’s the younger guy with black hair.)

Papa John’s is now a 20-year-old company, and it’s been about 13 years since its IPO. According to John Schnatter, the pizza business is currently going through tough times. In an interview with Pizza Today magazine, Schnatter explains that, in the 1990’s, the average annual growth for a pizza business was about 4% to 8% a year. Today, pizza restaurants work very hard to grow 2% a year. That makes investors unhappy. Investors like to see much higher margins of growth.

So although Papa John’s has been extremely successful as a public company, John Schnatter and his management team still have to deal with a lot of responsibilities. One of the greatest is keeping investors happy.

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