Papa Johns managing director Chris Phylactou has recently confirmed that the firm was “no longer losing money”.
Papa Johns issues major update over its future after shutting 40 branches
Papa Johns has shared a huge update after closing 40 high street restaurant branches. Papa Johns managing director Chris Phylactou has recently confirmed that the firm was “no longer losing money”.
Phylactou opened up about the impact closing so many stores had on the business, and himself. Speaking to City AM, Phylactou said: “In 2023 two of our largest partners flagged the risk of going insolvent.
“We took a strategic decision to acquire those and we kept those restaurants for nearly a year. We tried to look at which ones we could turn around and fortunately 60 of them were really good.
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“We franchised them internally to incumbent franchisees, 13 of them we’ve kept under corporate ownership, but unfortunately 43 of them we’ve had to close. Closing restaurants is never an easy decision.”
“That’s because of the difficult decisions we made back then”, Phylactou said. “Having people lose their jobs is the last option for us. We tried everything to keep the restaurants open.” He added: “It’s never an easy decision and something that I wasn’t happy doing, but it’s something that we had to do as a brand.
“We held on to the restaurants probably longer than we should have to protect the people for as long as we could. And we put a lot of effort into trying those trying to turn those businesses around.
“But unfortunately, they were even the wrong location and the performance of the restaurants was really bad. So there was no business case to keep them open.”
At the start of 2024, Papa Johns owned 118 branches and 406 franchise stores. However, in 2023, Papa Johns closed 22 branches but opened 15 new sites.
It is rivalled by the likes fo Dominos and also independent eateries, with Birmingham boasting the likes of Rudy’s and Otto.