Papa Johns signs new 50-unit franchise deal with The Bajco Group

Dive Brief:

Papa Johns franchisee Nadeem Bajwa and his company, The Bajco Group, agreed to open 50 restaurants by 2028, the pizza delivery chain said in a press release Tuesday.
The deal will expand The Bajco Group’s presence in the Midwest, Arizona, Pennsylvania and Florida.
The operator, which runs over 200 restaurants and is one of the chain’s largest domestic franchisees, has a goal of eventually owning 500 Papa Johns restaurants.

Dive Insight:

The Bajco Group will benefit from Papa Johns’ Back to Growth Program, an element of its Back to Better initiative that offers development incentives to accelerate the chain’s growth in North America. As part of the program, franchisees that open stores this year can waive their national marketing fund contribution, the pizza giant said earlier this year.

The development program is expected to “boost restaurant-level margins during the first five years of operations of new restaurants — equating to a 600-basis point of annual cost savings in restaurant P&Ls,” according to the press release. These savings will boost cash-on-cash returns for operators and attract growth-oriented franchisees, thus helping the company expand within key markets.

Papa Johns is also investing heavily to bolster its North America development infrastructure by adding additional personnel who are focused on accelerating franchisee growth, though the chain did not specify which specific positions it had filled or created.

While this deal marks Papa Johns’ largest deal announced so far under the second phase of its Back to Better initiative, the brand has signed large deals for development in the past couple of years. In 2020, it signed a deal with HB Restaurant Group to develop 49 restaurants through 2028 in Philadelphia and southern New Jersey. In 2021, it signed the largest domestic franchise deal in the company’s history with Sun Holdings. That operator agreed to develop 100 stores in high-growth markets in Texas by 2029. In 2022, Papa Johns transferred 90 units in Texas to Sun Holdings.