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- Papa John's founder and former CEO John Schnatter says he's been binging on the chain's pizza.
- In the last 18 months, he said he's "sampled" 800 pies - a continuation of his previous 40 pies in 30 days marathon.
- "Some were burnt, some were undercooked," the exited founder told Bloomberg.
The exiled founder, namesake, and former CEO of Papa John's has been eating a lot of the chain's pizza in the last 18 months: Somewhere in the realm of 800 pizzas in total, "Papa John" Schnatter told Bloomberg.
He isn't consuming the whole pies, but "sampling" them instead - a kind of anecdotal quality assurance process that he said is returning lackluster results.
"Some were burnt," he said. "Some were undercooked." This isn't his first time criticizing the company's pizza since he left the company in 2018 amid a controversy where he admitted to using the N-word on a work conference call.
"I've had over 40 pizzas in the last 30 days," Schnatter told WDRB News, a Fox affiliate in Louisville, Kentucky, in late 2019. "And it's not the same pizza. It's not the same product. It just doesn't taste as good."
Schnatter has been a vocal critic of his former company and its new CEO, Rob Lynch, since his rapid downfall as its leader began in late 2017.
In a November 2017 investor call, as NFL players were kneeling during the national anthem to protest police brutality and systemic racism, Schnatter criticized the NFL for not reconciling "the current debacle."
"The NFL has hurt us," he said. "And more importantly, by not resolving the current debacle to the players and owners' satisfaction, NFL leadership has hurt Papa John's shareholders."
At the time, Papa John's was the official pizza of the NFL, a $34 million annual expense for the company, according to Bloomberg, which also included a major advertising partnership with the league.
A month later, Schnatter resigned as the company's CEO, but remained the chairman of its board. Papa John's backed out of its partnership with the NFL soon after, which Pizza Hut picked up a few weeks later.
Then, in July 2018, on a company conference call with a PR firm, Schnatter doubled down on his criticisms of the players protesting, before using a racial slur.
"They're all beating their wives up," he said on the call, in reference to professional football players in the NFL. "They're all on steroids or pot, and now [NFL Commissioner Roger Goddell's] going to let them protest."
Later in the call, Schnatter compared himself to another fast-food figure: "What bothers me is Colonel Sanders called Blacks '[n-word],' " he said. "I'm like, 'I've never used that word.'"
He apologized and stepped down from the board, before promptly suing Papa John's.
His lawsuit sought internal documents that he believed would explain the "unexplained and heavy-handed way in which the company has treated him since the publication of a story that falsely accused him of using a racial slur," a spokesperson for his attorney, Patricia Glaser, wrote in an email to Insider.
The lawsuit included an audio recording of the call where Schnatter used the racial slur.
Schnatter has since claimed he was forced to resign, and that the company's product has degraded since his departure.
"They stole the company, and now they've destroyed the company," Schnatter said in late 2019. "The day of reckoning will come."
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