This is John Schnatter, CEO of Papa John's Pizza. He has a net worth of $600 million.
This is where he lives.
In an August conference call, this is what Schnatter said of Obamacare's effect on company costs:
Our best estimate is that the Obamacare [law] will cost about 11 to 14 cents per pizza – or 15 or 20 cents per order from a corporate basis. To put that in perspective, our average delivery charge is $1.75 to $2.50 – or about 10-fold our estimated cost of the Obamacare [law] to Papa John's. We're not supportive of Obamacare, like most businesses in our industry. But our business model and unit economics [are] about as ideal as you can get for a food company to absorb Obamacare…. We have a high ticket average with extremely high frequency of order counts – millions of pizzas per year. To give you an example, Peter, let's say fuel goes up, which it does from time to time, and we have to raise delivery charges. We don't like raising delivery charges. But the price of fuel is out of our control, as is Obamacare. So if Obamacare is, in fact, not repealed, we will find tactics to shallow out any Obamacare costs and core strategies to pass that cost onto the consumer in order to protect our shareholders' best interest.
And as a "Forbes" article from earlier this week points out:
So how much would prices go up... if they were to fairly reflect the increased cost of doing business onset by Obamacare? Roughly 3.4 to 4.6 cents a pie.
This comes right after a promotion Papa John's did where they gave away 2 million pizzas for free.
Schnatter is now considering cutting workers' hours to pay for the increased costs of health care.
According to Alternet, Papa John's currently insures only one in three of its employees.
About a third of Papa John's employees are covered by the company's health insurance plan, although Schnatter said he has always wanted 100 percent of them on the plan. The rising costs of health insurance, he said, have been a deterrent.
Over the last two weeks, Reddit has been responding with proposed boycotts and of course...
Also, a user named Pepperoni Joe has been vandalizing the Papa John's Facebook wall (NSFW language).
In an attempt to battle the backlash, a group called Rebooting America attempted a pro–Papa John's social media campaign.
The hashtag #IStandWithPapaJohns was embraced by conservative Twitter users to combat Papa John's backlash.
