Financing

Todd Penegor on his first year as CEO of Papa Johns

A Deeper Dive: Penegor joins the weekly restaurant finance podcast to talk about Papa Johns’ focus on its core pizza, its use of third-party aggregators, technology, artificial intelligence and marketing.

What is Todd Penegor doing at Papa Johns?

This week’s episode of the Restaurant Business podcast A Deeper Dive features Todd Penegor, who has been CEO of the Atlanta-based pizza chain for just over a year. 

This is a great conversation. Penegor has helped Papa Johns regain sales momentum during a particularly difficult time, both for the sector and the fast-food business in general. The company has done this through a variety of means. 

We talk about the company’s focus on its core pizza. Todd talks about that effort, and he gives some hints at what may be coming. 

We talk about technology, including artificial intelligence, and the work being done on that front. We talk about loyalty. And we talk extensively about third-party delivery, and how Papa Johns can maintain its first-party service even as aggregators take more delivery business away.

We also talk about marketing, and especially local marketing. Papa Johns has worked to shift marketing back to local after moving that spending nationally under the previous management.

We’re talking pizza on A Deeper Dive so please check it out.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts.

Subscribe on Spotify.

Members help make our journalism possible. Become a Restaurant Business member today and unlock exclusive benefits, including unlimited access to all of our content. Sign up here.

Multimedia

Exclusive Content

Financing

Papa Johns is reportedly weighing a buyout offer, again

The Bottom Line: The pizza chain is reportedly weighing an offer from Irth Capital Management that would take the company private, the latest in a long line of buyout rumors and reports.

Emerging Brands

Rice Mediterranean Kitchen brings Persian flavors to the table

This Iranian-American family has been slowly building a fast-casual Mediterranean brand with a Persian twist. It couldn't be more relevant.

Financing

Inside Omer Gajial's plans for Auntie Anne's owner GoTo Foods

The new CEO of the fast-food chain operator wants to build unit economics, improve the customer experience and build on its technology capabilities.

Trending

More from our partners