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Papa John's LeBron James 'Crybaby' Shirt Controversy Means Cheap Pizza for Clevelanders

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The news: Some Cleveland Cavaliers fans are boycotting Papa John's because of a T-shirt circulated at the Cavs-Washington Wizards game on Friday night.

Behind the news: The shirt had the word "crybaby" emblazoned above James's number, 23, and was distributed by a local Papa John's as a way to help fans distract James during Friday's game. "Crybaby" was a reference to James's waterworks and whining over being fouled excessively hard in a previous game.

The shirt nonsense didn't get much play until John Eick from the blog So Good posted about it and had Cleveland fans rallying against the chain. Papa John's issued an apology, will donate $10k to the Cavaliers Youth Fund, and is offering Clevelanders large one-topping pizzas for 23¢ (one per order, pick-up only) on May 8. After the jump, a news report on the debacle.

Link: Papa John's "Crybaby" T-Shirt Story [YouTube]

Related

Does Papa John's Hate the State of Ohio? (the post that started it all) [So Good]
Papa John's Story Continues [So Good]
Papa John's Crybaby Sunday Afternoon Update [So Good]
Papa John's Apologizes [So Good]

3 Comments:

Obviously this was not a nationally issued opinion and as the Director of Marketing for a very large franchise with 28 of our stores in Ohio, we are deeply saddened by this judgement call that put all Papa John's stores in jeopardy. I hope that people will see this as something done without consent of every Papa John's owner. PJ Ohio stands firm and supports LeBron James. We are sorry this happened.

I had my own thoughts on this
http://thegurglingcod.typepad.com/thegurglingcod/2008/05/sliding-by-on-g.html
but I do wonder if news stories involving Papa John's can actually be considered pizza-related, and thus within the purview of Slice.

I went to the link you provided and responded... thanks! Damage control sucks when the actions of another franchise were very poorly thought out.

Jon Eick is exactly right, this was not approved... Gurgling Cod, I was told on Monday by corporate there were about 5 shirts. I don't know if that number is higher or lower, but I don't think it was a lot...

From my understanding there weren't meetings and high up food chain things going on here. As with most pizza chains, Papa John's is made up of many franchisees. Washington DC is a franchise, not corporate. Corporate owns the Cleveland market... duh would they ALLOW someone to hurt their business knowingly.

FYI the average 1 Topping Large Pizza cost $2.80 to make with food and paper products and doesn't cover overhead or labor. .23 hardly covers any cost and even if it did it wouldn't matter because Papa John's is donating each sale to the Cleveland Cavaliers Youth fund that day along with an additional 10K!

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