Robin Garr wrote:At the old Courier-Journal and Times, for instance, raising subscription rates and newsstand prices always resulted in losing some subscribers, so the Binghams were loath to do it and would suffer a slight, gradual ROI for a time in preference to a sudden, sharp one when they raised the rate.
This is an apples / oranges comparison to Papa John's. I can relate because I, too, draw on my experience as a cog in a few machines over the years. But...
Difference 1:
The Binghams (much admired and rightly so) had private ownership of the newspaper(s), among other businesses, and could afford to accept lower profit if it suited them. If they earned less it affected no one but the Binghams and certainly put them at no risk of living under a highway overpass Personally I think they deserved everything they got for their fine stewardship and keen sense of community responsibility, but less profit did not make a material difference in their experience of life.
Papa John's is publicly traded. They'd be irresponsible to accept lower earnings. Almost everyone who is already retired as well as workers with their retirement hopes in pensions or 401k / 403b plans have much or most money in mutual funds with a mix of hundreds, maybe even thousands, of companies like Papa Johns. If performance lags in comparison to other stocks, the mutual fund managers drop the lower performers in favor of higher performers based, ideally, not on short term blips but on long term success in making more good decisions than bad ones and information on their current business plan. Papa Johns can afford to make a misstep once in a while but absolutely has to get it right (economically) more often than the competition or their value drops and so does the value of the portfolios of lots of average folks who want something to rely on more than Social Security. There aren't that many fat cats out there who own big chunks of Papa Johns as an individual stock. Papa Johns has to deliver results that impress the professionals who, in turn, strive to increase the value of the mix of shares in the stock funds they manage so Grandma and Grandpa can keep the house above freezing in the winter. That's not about Papa Johns alone, but about them and thousands of other companies collectively that people are hoping to tide them through old age. Really.
Difference 2:
The Binghams could also afford more latitude in how aggressively they pursued profit because they were in a business ecology with no real competition for leadership in this vicinity for the top newspaper. The C-J & Times had no legal environment to worry about apart from local, state and federal.
Papa Johns is a multinational now and has to attend to the legal structure and tax laws in two or three dozen countries. In some of those countries they may be the big contender, I admit I don't know about the environment abroad, but locally, nationally and internationally Papa Johns is scrambling for market share with Pizza Hut, Dominos, Little Caesar's, Papa Murphy's & likely chains we've never heard of abroad.
Difference 3:
Schnatter is no fool. He knows the ingredients, better or not, for ALL pizzas are going up thanks to the worst drought since the Eisenhower years. The prepared food industry has been desperately trying to hold down costs to the consumer for years. The damage to grain harvests will affect the cost of dough, cheese from milk made from feeding cows, umm, grain and most meat used on pizzas. So he's betting this is a tipping point where all the big dogs are going to have to up the price or cut into their ability to grow and survive. I suspect he's right, but only time will tell.
But more important than that - did he say the price would go up because of those economic realities? No. He said it would go up because of the Affordable Care Act as though that was the only factor involved.
Now, in fairness I do not think he's saying something that is not true, but he's not saying the whole truth and as such I can fairly accuse him of deliberately misleading the gullible.
Robin, back to you as I was not there back in the Bingham time.
Is this actually a third difference, or did the Binghams engage in the kind of sleazy sleight of hand Schnatter is practicing?
) and opinion, wherein they took joy from the publisher's right and responsibility to use their publications as a bully pulpit to preach what they thought was right.