LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) — Papa Johns CEO Rob Lynch is leaving to take over fast food chain Shake Shack, the companies said Thursday.
Lynch has led Papa Johns since August 2019, when he was hired in the wake of the messy ouster of company founder John Schnatter in mid-2018.
While Papa Johns remains nominally headquartered in Louisville, the company in 2021 established a dual headquarters in the Atlanta area, the home of Lynch and also the company’s new interim CEO, Ravi Thanawala.
Papa Johns still has a presence in Louisville, where it maintains a suburban corporate campus that the company decided to keep last year after listing it on the real estate market.
Shake Shack, the upscale burger chain, is a smaller business than Papa Johns, with $1.1 billion in revenue in 2023, compared to the pizza chain’s $2.1 billion. Papa Johns has about ten times as many stores globally as Shake Shack.
But the younger Shake Shack is growing faster than Papa Johns. Investors value the company’s stock at $4.6 billion, compared to $2.3 billion for Papa Johns.
