Papa John’s pizza hasn’t been having a good couple of weeks. Their conservative CEO John Schnatter decided to try and blame black athletes’ peaceful protest of racial injustice for the flagging sales the company was seeing. He was subsequently trolled by other pizza chains on social media, who pointed out that they were not seeing the deleterious affects of peaceful protests on their sales figures. Then it was revealed that Schnatter himself has taken a $ 70 million hit in the 24 hours it took for the market to digest his numbers and excuses. This is all the result of the collective understanding that Papa John’s product is “meh” at best, and blaming peaceful protesters and the NFL’s handling of said peaceful protest is kinda racist.
So, in 2017, Papa John’s pizza has to do some 1960s-style damage control. The Huffington Post did a piece about the possibility that Papa John’s pizza could become the “official pizza” of the alt-right, via racists on The Daily Stormer.
Papa John’s founder and CEO John Schnatter got cheesed off about the NFL kneeling controversy on a conference call with investors on Wednesday, and by Thursday his product was being held up by the world’s most influential neo-Nazi site as the potential pizza of choice for the alt-right.
Once The Daily Stormer decides to embrace a brand, the entire white supremacist community tends to jump in. It has happened before with New Balance, with Wendy’s.
Our own Scout Finch has heard the rumblings in her neck of the woods.
When HuffPo presented this info to Papa John’s spokesperson Peter Collins, he had this to say:
Collins expressed shock when HuffPost told him that neo-Nazis were considering endorsing his company’s product. “I appreciate you bringing this to light,” he said. “We didn’t have any idea about it.”
Collins later emailed an official statement from Papa John’s on the matter: “We condemn racism in all forms and any and all hate groups that support it. We do not want these individuals or groups to buy our pizza.”
Strong stance, Papa John’s. Your executive suite must be made up of a crew of Rosa Parkses … terrible pizza-loving Rosa Parkses.