John Schnatter

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Schnatter founded Papa John's Pizza in 1984, when he converted a broom closet in the back of his father's tavern. Schnatter sold his 1971 Z28 Camaro to purchase $1,600 worth of used pizza equipment and began selling pizzas to the tavern's customers. His pizzas proved sufficiently popular that a year later he moved into an adjoining space. The company went public in 1993. A year later it had 500 stores, and by 1997 it had opened 1,500 stores. In 2009, Schnatter reacquired the Camaro after offering a reward of $250,000 for it.

Schnatter moved his company to Louisville, Kentucky, in the late 1990s.

In early 2005, Schnatter stepped down as president and CEO of Papa John's, but remained chairman of the board. He returned as CEO in 2008 and briefly had a co-CEO in 2010.

In October 2017, in a conference call with investors, Schnatter blamed the National Football League for poor financial performance, saying, "The NFL has hurt us ... We are disappointed the NFL and its leadership did not resolve this", referring to the U.S. national anthem protests by football players. Papa John's Pizza had a marketing agreement to be the NFL's "official pizza company" and also had marketing deals with 23 of its 32 teams, and Schnatter said the protests were hurting the company's sales. Later that day, Papa John's announced that the NFL shield or "official sponsor" designation on Papa John's commercials and advertising would be removed. On December 21, 2017, Schnatter announced that he would step down as CEO of Papa John's amid controversy over his comments. He was replaced as Chief Executive Officer by Chief Operating Officer Steve Richie, effective January 1, 2018. The company said Schnatter would still appear in the chain's commercials and on its pizza boxes, and was the company's biggest shareholder with approximately 9.5 million shares. He remained chairman of the company's board of directors at the time.

In July 2018, Schnatter participated in an internal training conference call with marketing consultants in which there was a role-playing exercise to help Schnatter avoid making remarks that could cause public controversy and damage the company's reputation. During the conference call, Schnatter said, "Colonel Sanders called blacks niggers and Sanders never faced public outcry". Schnatter also said that people in his home state of Indiana used to drag African Americans from trucks until they died. After the call, the owner of the marketing agency moved to end its contract with Papa John's. Schnatter resigned as chairman of the board the same day the incident was reported. Later that day, he also stepped down from the University of Louisville board of trustees.

On July 26, 2018, Schnatter filed a lawsuit in Delaware against Papa John's Pizza to give him access to the company's books and records; the company did not allow him to access its business records after he resigned in the wake of the teleconference call scandal. He described the company's procedures as an "unexplained and heavy-handed way" to cut ties between him and the company. In addition to preventing him from accessing information, the corporation also implemented a "poison pill" strategy to limit Schnatter's chances of buying back a majority stake in the company. Schnatter also filed a lawsuit against the company in Kentucky in a dispute over property ownership. In January 2019, a judge ordered the company to give Schnatter access to its records relating to his ouster. A settlement of the lawsuits was announced on March 5, 2019. Under the agreement, the company agreed to share all of its records with Schnatter and to remove a part of its "poison pill" plan that restricted his communication with other shareholders, and Schnatter agreed that he would not seek to stay on the company's board of directors after his term expired on April 30, 2019, and that if a mutually agreeable independent director was chosen to replace him, he would step down before the end of his term. Schnatter retained the right to sue if the records show wrongdoing by the company. The company also agreed to remove a requirement that the activist hedge fund Starboard Value, which owns about 10% of the company, must vote in favor of the incumbent board. As of March 2019, Schnatter remained the owner of 31% of the company's shares, but by May 23, he had sold 3.8 million shares and reduced his stake in the company to 19%. By November 2019, his stake was under 17%.

In June 2019, the company was the fourth-largest take-out and pizza delivery restaurant chain in the world, with headquarters in Jeffersontown, Kentucky, part of the Louisville metropolitan area.

In November 2019, Schnatter made his first public comments after leaving Papa John's to Louisville Fox affiliate WDRB. In the interview, he admitted he had used the word "nigger" during an internal conference call on diversity training, but said he did so to convey his hatred of racism and was quoting someone else. Schnatter said, "I've had over 40 pizzas in the last 30 days, and it's not the same pizza. It's not the same product. It just doesn't taste as good." He warned that "the day of reckoning will come". The interview subsequently went viral, with numerous parodies appearing online. In an interview three months later, Schnatter said he had not actually eaten over 40 pizzas in 30 days. Instead, he had tasted over 40 pizzas during that time, as a quality inspection activity. Schnatter also criticized the way the company had been run immediately after his departure by Steve Ritchie, who was described as his former protégé. Ritchie had replaced him as CEO, but had been dismissed after less than a year, and Schnatter said he saw more common ground with Jeff Smith, who became chairman of the board in February 2019. "The one thing he and I agree on is that Steve Ritchie is not a CEO," Schnatter said.

In 1996, Schnatter started a Louisville-based real estate company called Evergreen Real Estate. The company owns a number of historic properties in Schnatter's home community of Anchorage, Kentucky.

Schnatter launched a business called Calistoga Artisan Sandwiches in 2007. In 2008, he made a million-dollar contribution to the Louisville Zoo's Glacier Run expansion in exchange for Calistoga having naming rights to an adjacent water park. The Calistoga business was mostly shut down in 2012, although three locations continued to operate in Naples, Florida.

In response to the unhealthiness of processed foods and the rise of commercial farms, Schnatter announced the creation of Papa Farms at the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2022. The farm plans to grow crops without GMOs, pesticides and fertilizer.

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• Named 1998 National Ernst & Young Retail/Consumer Entrepreneur of The Year.
• Named one of the Ten Outstanding Young Americans in 2000 by the National Jaycees Organization.
• Inducted into the Junior Achievement U.S. Business Hall of Fame in 2007.
• In May 2009 Schnatter was named honorary chair of the Ride to Conquer Cancer benefiting Louisville's Norton Cancer Institute.
• Inducted into the Kentucky Entrepreneur Hall of Fame in 2010.
• In 2012, he became an honorary initiate of Alpha Tau Omega.