![]() “That’s why he’s gone through so many executive teams in his life.” (Reached through a representative, Schnatter denied the incident.) “John had this tendency: When he was done with you, he was done with you,” says Donna Alcorn, who left Papa John’s in 2010 as a senior vice president and says she had a positive experience overall. In one case, he moved a scorned executive’s parking spot to the very back of the garage. Schnatter sometimes conducted meetings from his exercise bike and was prone to outbursts. His own office was outfitted with black marble and a fireplace. When he commissioned a fresco for one of its ceilings, he had his face painted into the plaster. Schnatter moved the firm into a luxurious new headquarters in Louisville, Kentucky, in the late 1990s. We went from 23 stores to 900, and they continued to grow after I left,” says former president Dan Holland, who helped take the company public in 1993 and departed two years later. And then we built a pizza empire,” Schnatter writes in his book.Įarly employees credit Schnatter for fueling growth. The pizza sold well, and he opened a stand-alone shop the following year. In 1984, he installed a pizza oven at his dad’s tavern, Mick’s Lounge, and started churning out pies. John Schnatter grew up in Jeffersonville, Indiana, the son of a clerk and a serial entrepreneur. O understand Papa John’s current state, one needs to understand how it was built. Says a recently departed executive, “The only people that are staying there are the people that can’t get a good job elsewhere.” Most spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing legal shackles or fear of retaliation. No sources cited in this article approached us all were contacted directly. Forbes spent months piecing it all together. Now the full story is being told for the first time. So when Schnatter wrote his memoir, Papa: The Story of Papa John’s Pizza, no one could openly dispute it. Other confidentiality and nondisparagement contracts and mandatory arbitration agreements further discouraged people from speaking out. ![]() Since roughly 2013, corporate employees at Papa John's have signed nondisclosure agreements barring them from discussing Schnatter’s personal life. ![]() We take this matter seriously. If anything is found to be wrong, we are determined to take appropriate action.” After this story originally published, a Papa John's spokesman issued this comment: “As previously announced, a special committee of the Board of Directors, comprised solely of independent directors, has retained an outside firm to oversee an audit and investigation of the culture at the company and to make recommendations for whatever changes may be necessary. And O’Hern contested portions of this story, though he confirmed his close ties to Schnatter. Ritchie, for his part, did not respond to a request for comment. ![]() Papa John’s did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Reached through a representative, Schnatter disputed most of this story. Male executives made references to “gangbangs” and comments about whether women wanted “to jump on the train.” Three former employees say Ritchie was present when these types of remarks were made and just laughed along. Under Ritchie’s and Schnatter’s watch, multiple insiders describe a laundry list of transgressions: Female employees were mocked and asked if they were menstruating. “Nothing is happening there unless John wants it to happen.” “Papa John’s has effectively been a public company operated like it is privately owned,” a veteran employee says.
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