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Papa John‘s has been at the center of controversy over the last few weeks. It all stems from a quarterly earnings phone call that featured the company’s CEO, John Schattner. At one point, Schattner stated his belief that the recent protests in the NFL had a hand in the company’s stock going down by 24 percent over the last year, with the pizza magnate saying the protests “should have been nipped in the bud a year and a half ago.”
The soundbite led to a strange turn of events for the company, as white supremacists and Nazis began embracing the chain as their official pizza, with Papa John’s responding by asking those people to stop buying their product.
On Tuesday night, the company’s official Twitter account weighed in on the whole ordeal. It started by apologizing for Schattner’s comments before saying that it believes there is a way to protest inequality while still honoring the national anthem.
The statements made on our earnings call were describing the factors that impact our business and we sincerely apologize to anyone that thought they were divisive. That definitely was not our intention. (1/3)
— Papa Johns (@PapaJohns) November 15, 2017
We believe in the right to protest inequality and support the players’ movement to create a new platform for change. We also believe together, as Americans, we should honor our anthem. There is a way to do both. (2/3)
— Papa Johns (@PapaJohns) November 15, 2017
It then talked about how it wants to work with everyone to find a way to accomplish this, as long as those people are not neo-nazis. The Twitter account used an emoji to express its thoughts on those who rallied around their pizza last week.
We will work with the players and league to find a positive way forward. Open to ideas from all. Except neo-nazis — 🖕those guys. (3/3)
— Papa Johns (@PapaJohns) November 15, 2017
Papa John’s seems like it wants to work with the league, even if it was a bit vague on how it plans on doing that. The only thing we do know is that the company wants to distance itself from Nazis in any way that it can.