

Twilight of the Pizza Barons - theandrewbailey
http://www.businessweek.com/printer/articles/211203-twilight-of-the-pizza-barons?Src=longreads

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lfam
That link failed on my mobile device. Try this link instead:
[http://mobile.businessweek.com/articles/2014-07-03/dominos-l...](http://mobile.businessweek.com/articles/2014-07-03/dominos-
little-caesars-pizza-founders-contrasting-legacies)

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ebbv
This is a fluff piece with no substance. It talks about how both companies
combined are 20% of the market in 2013, and not about how in the 80s and 90s
they dominated it. No talk about how both companies let competitors come in
and eat their lunch (pun intended.) Just a brief mention of how Monaghan lost
focus on the company, the solution to which is apparently to sell it off to
vulture capitalists who have continued to run it into the ground. No talk
about how Monaghan's Catholic zealotry has resulted in the decline of a
massive company to the detriment of its thousands of employees and hundreds of
franchise owners.

There's a wealth of interesting topics to talk about in this story, and
Business Week did a great job avoiding all of it.

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Strang
"Zealotry" is an unnecessarily inflammatory term. And do you really believe
that every business owner has a responsibility to run his business as
successfully as possible, even if it violates his own conscience? And do you
believe that a former business owner should accept responsibility for the
actions of the buyer after selling the business?

edit: I do definitely agree with you that a story about the decline of the two
businesses would have been much more interesting. And a story of the mini-
comeback, in the case of Little Caesar's.

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ebbv
Inflammatory or not if you compare Monaghan to the average Catholic in the US,
he comes off as a zealot, IMHO. And I guarantee he takes less offense at me
calling him a name than I do at his actual actions that have real consequences
in the lives of people who do not share his views. It's fine to hold whatever
beliefs you want, and it's fine to take actions on those beliefs as long as
they either don't affect others or only affect others in ways they would agree
improve their lives. What's not ok is when you take action on your beliefs
that harms others.

As far as being responsible for the actions of whomever you sell the company
to, I think it's pretty obvious here why I blame him for the actions of Bain
Capital. Because it's well known what Bain Capital does to most of the
companies it buys. They have a reputation as the pre-eminent vulture
capitalists for a reason. So given that it's well known what these guys do and
he chose to sell to them, then yes, he can be held responsible for them doing
exactly what you'd expect to do. If you put your dog in charge of watching the
steaks while they rest, it's your fault when the dog eats them.

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BallinBige
fascinating article about two similar businesses yet opposite approaches to
market.

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sbierwagen

      On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find 
      interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. 
      If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might 
      be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
      
      Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, 
      unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. 
      Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. 
      If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

~~~
alelefant
Thanks for verifying the article was on-topic. ;)

