Papa John's...Oh You Silly People

So Papa John's decided to go above and beyond on Thursday by offering $ 0.23 pizzas as part of an apology to LeBron James. Apparantly, a franchise of the yummy pizza chain printed t-shirts calling James a "crybaby," and a public apology plus the pizza promo was the plan. The crazy-cheap pizza's were available (for a while) all over North East Ohio, from Columbus to Youngstown.

The problem with this situation is the pizza execs didn't think this through. When I worked for Wendy's, we held a customer appreciation weekend in the aftermath of that damn finger issue. This event included giving away free kid's size Frosties.

The difference between Wendy's and Papa John's? The Frosty giveaway was planned several weeks in advance. Our suppliers were able to bulk up on Frosty mix (though not enough) and we were able to order it in as part of normal shipments (again, though not enough). We were also able to sit down as a management team at each restaurant and plan how to do this, even experiment a little. This kept chaos and confusion to a minimum.

Papa John's threw all this together in about a week, from what I've read. They also kept adding markets. This made it impossible for stores to adequately prepare. The end result? Well...I know Sarah and I tried to get in on this, but their phones were all busy. When Sarah drove to the store, she found a line down the street.

I didn't realize how bad it was until I got a copy of the Columbus Dispatch on Friday. The fact is, pizza takes about 10 minutes to cook. That's after you get the order and prep the dough. Then you've got another couple minutes to cut and box it. You can only cook so many pizza's at any given time...the demand for this was insane. Even if they HAD planned this out further along, the result would have been very similar.

But really, I'm not disappointed in Papa John's that much. Go big, or go home. It was a seriously big hairy audacious goal, and I applaud that. I'm more disappointed in the people who were near to rioting over

!!!PIZZA!!!

Cops had to be called in to several stores. Cops had to provide extra patrols to make sure no one came back and vandalized the stores. I mean...c'mon people. Life is full of disappointment. Let's not act like animals, or peasants. Pizza is never a good reason for disorderly conduct, no matter what the price.

For shame.