Did you secretly love the Papa John's promotions the Tampa Bays used to run before company CEO went full-blown racist (again) last week?
Well, get ready to possibly welcome the smell of synthesized garlic butter back into your life.
Today — after initially suspending promotions after company founder and chairman John Schnatter (who now says resigning was a mistake) acknowledged using a racial slur during a May media training exercise — the Rays announced that the team welcomed "the opportunity to continue to work with the local owner-operators in Tampa Bay to bring exciting and valuable promotions to our fans, and to expand our combined community efforts."
Since 2002, the Rays have worked with local Papa John’s owner-operators to give fans promotions and deliver frequent donations of food to shared community partners, such as Feeding Tampa Bay, Habitat for Humanity, Ronald McDonald House and CASA.
"We support the recent actions taken by Papa John’s corporate headquarters to remove John Schnatter from the company. Racism has no place in society, and we condemn Mr. Schnatter’s remarks," the team said in a statement. "Papa John’s corporate team has committed to taking significant action steps to move beyond this incident, including a third-party audit of processes, policies and systems related to diversity and inclusion, supplier engagement and Papa John’s culture; as well as establishing transparent goals and a communication process to monitor them that will be applied across all stores."
We've reached out to the team to see if this specifically means that Papa John's promotions are coming back to the ballpark, and will update this post with more information.
