Papa John’s Cavalier Attitude to Cost Pizza Giant Tons of Dough
Papa John’s, the giant national pizza chain, celebrated Cinco de Mayo by allowing customers to “[s]pell out Mexico with your choice of Papa John’s superior-quality toppings: Mushrooms, EXtra cheese, spicy Italian sausage, grilled Chicken and Onion.” I wonder how that went.
Unfortunately for them, Papa John’s also celebrated the day with a mea culpa in which company will virtually give away pizzas to an entire city.
Papa John’s Pizza issued an apology to Cleveland and the Cavaliers for making T-shirts with LeBron James’ number and the word “crybaby” under it.
To apologize, Papa John’s will sell Cleveland residents a large, one-topping pizza for 23 cents on Thursday. The 23 is an homage to James’ jersey number. The company also will donate $10,000 to the Cavaliers Youth Fund.
The pizza chain’s T-shirts were featured during the Cavs’ games against the Wizards on Friday in Washington. Wizards fans taunted the Cavs, who won the playoff series that night in Game 6.
The shirts started after James complained about hard fouls, and Wizards center Brendan Haywood called him a crybaby.
More on the story from Jon Eick (of the great food-humor blog So Good), who broke it, here. Cleveland’s anger prior to the free-pizza deal here.
Update: In case you want to see what a 2-hour wait outside a Papa John’s looks like.
Crispy Podcast Episode 1
In the inaugural episode of our weekly podcast, we discuss Paul Prudhome dodging bullets, the Amy Winehouse saga, the merits of lettuce and mayonaise on pizzza, the Nats going BYOF, food safety regs, and the week in bacon. We also recommend Ciao Bella gelato, which is insanely great.
Please take a listen and post a comment letting us know what you think. We apologize in advance for the audio quality, which is a little chintzy, but hey, it’s our first time and it will get better. If you like what you hear, please subscribe to the show for free. You can grab the RSS feed or click here to subscribe in iTunes. That way you’ll get it every week.
