DanB wrote:Marsha, I have to wonder what problem you have with his statements. It is, without doubt, common sense to assume franchisees at every fast food chain in America will be cutting hours in response to Obamacare, including PJs franchisees. That's a straight forward answer to what his best guess was on the near term outcome. I'm not sure what else you expect him to say. He called it a lose-lose situation i.e. PJ franchisees lose and their employees lose too. For the life of me I can't figure out what you find wrong with that.
I find a lot wrong with it. The amount of money he's talking about is around 1% of his costs. Cheese prices alone fluctuated about 14% last year, but I don't remember him telling his investors he was going to stop putting cheese on Papa John's pizzas. Had he given away 1 million free pies this NFL season rather than the 2 million he's slated to give away, the whole thing would be a moot point. What do I expect him to say? Well, he started off on the right foot by saying his corporation was better positioned than most to absorb the added cost of the ACA. So - absorb it, treat your employees like humans instead of chattel. You've done extremely well for yourself, and that's great, is what I said. And then I said, hey - wouldn't you like to donate to the sort of organization your gang always says is the way to fund charity? Through a non-government, community-based group?
DanB wrote:Otherwise you're doing a bang-up job of ruining any chances your charity had to get donations from Schnatter, PJs corporation, or any of it's well-paid management types who call Louisville home. If your intention really was to get more money for your charity, you could have done a bit of networking, got the name of his executive secretary, sent a very nice lettter, perhaps even alluding discreetly to his recent PR problems, and then asking very nicely for a donation (hint, hint this could help you John). Instead, you're insulting him publicly, thereby screwing your charity out of any chance to get donations from his camp. Seems to me you're a lot less interested in getting donations from him than you are in simply "calling him out" in public.
See, again, I don't feel like I insulted him. As I was writing, I was making a great effort not to do so. There've been plenty of people doing that. I didn't call for a boycott. I didn't disparage his product. But what he did and said was newsworthy. I hoped that writing about it, since I'm a food writer in the town where he's from, would draw a lot of eyes and page clicks. I hoped to draw attention to APRON, and our upcoming fundraiser.
Believe me, I know how to network. Had I wanted to contact him directly and ask for a donation, I certainly would have had no trouble landing a letter directly on his desk. But why does anyone write an open letter? So other people can read it and examine their own position on the issue. I actually still have some hope he might write a check to APRON, or at least Dine Out at one of the participating restaurants on December 4th. But if he doesn't, at least a few dozen others might, as a result of reading my column.
DanB wrote:I just dislike intellectually dishonest bullshit and/or sloppy work.
"There you go again," to quote another famous conservative. My column was not intellectually dishonest bullshit. I was not sloppy. I didn't refer to the CNN piece, I referred to this article in Forbes Magazine, in which someone actually did the math:
Last year, Papa John’s International captured $1.218 billion in revenue. Total operating expenses were $1.131 billion. So if Schnatter’s math is accurate (Obamacare will cost his company $5-8 million more annually), then new regulation translates into a .4% to .7% (yes, fractions of a percent) expense increase. It’s difficult to set that ratio against the proposed pie increase, given size and topping differentials, but many of their large specialty pizzas run for $16. Remarkably, a 10-14 cent increase on a $16 pizza falls in a comparable range: .6% to.9%. But the cost transference becomes less equitable if you’re looking at medium pizzas, which run closer to $12, meaning a .8% to 1.15% price increase.
For the sake of argument, let’s say that Papa John’s sells exactly half medium/half large specialty pizzas. Averaging the ranges for both sizes, then averaging that product yields a .86% price increase — well outside the range of what Schnatter says Obamacare will cost him.
So how much would prices go up, under these 50/50 conditions, if they were to fairly reflect the increased cost of doing business onset by Obamacare? Roughly 3.4 to 4.6 cents a pie.
In September, the company announced that it would be giving away 2 million free pizzas. That was, of course, a promotion designed to increase brand awareness and to invite consumers to try the brand — with the ultimate goal of selling more pizzas. Those giveaways can’t really be cataloged alongside sales that would have been made otherwise. But just in case you’re curious, that would be the equivalent of $24 million to $32 million in pizza revenue.
