The 40-year-old man who arrived at the Omaha headquarters of Godfather’s Pizza to become its fourth president in as many years had never visited Nebraska and knew little about pizza.
Herman Cain had been a rising star at Pillsbury, a computer scientist and mathematician turned executive who had overseen 450 Burger Kings around Philadelphia, turning the underperforming region into one of the company’s most profitable.
Cain’s performance there caught the eye of top managers at Pillsbury, who tapped him in 1986 to take over their newly purchased Godfather’s Pizza subsidiary.
A quarter-century later, as Cain has clawed his way toward the top of the Republican presidential field, he cites his tenure as head of Godfather’s as the central example of his leadership ability. Just as he turned around that floundering business, he suggests, so too could he reverse the country’s sagging fortunes as its chief executive.
Cain’s approach at Godfather’s was one part business basics, one part theatrics and two parts enthusiasm and stamina. In nearly a decade at the helm of the company, he proved himself a charismatic leader and gifted orator. To some employees, he seemed more focused on broad strategy goals than the workaday details of the business, and yet former colleagues recall the frequent sight of him in a busy pizza parlor — jacket off, sleeves rolled up, making pies or cleaning tables.
Cain focused on boosting morale and pursued a strategy aimed at revitalizing the battered company, partly through laying off hundreds of workers. While he had early successes, he later struggled. And then he moved on.
At its peak in the early 1980s, Godfather’s had more than 900 locations and more than $300 million in annual sales. By the time Cain arrived, the growth had halted. Profit was declining. Morale had plummeted.
Cain has said on multiple occasions that the company he found “had one foot in the grave and another on a banana peel.” It’s unclear whether the situation was quite so dire. Cain told the Omaha World-Herald just after he started in 1986: “Godfather’s is not dead. We’re alive and well.”
Nobody disputes that the company faced serious problems.
“Right before Herman came aboard, it was completely demoralized. Culturally, it was devastated,” recalled Larry Uhl, a marketing manager who had arrived years earlier. “Everybody was a little suspicious of him at first,” he added, noting that several presidents had come and gone, and that Cain seemed at first like just another corporate suit. But Uhl said he differed from his predecessors. “He was committed, and he knew how to get other people committed. There was this sense of urgency he had.”
Dishing up spirit
From his first day, Cain gave regular and rousing speeches — peppered with adages that he has revived on the campaign trail — urging everyone at the company to think big and share in his vision of making Godfather’s the No. 1 pizza chain in the world. “If you truly do dream of being a part of that achievement, your creative energies will be unleashed and unstoppable,” he said in a speech to employees and franchisees the month after he arrived.
Charles Henderson, who worked with Cain at Burger King and followed him to Omaha to head marketing, said Cain had a little preacher in him. “He’s very, very inspiring. The guy can convince you to run through a wall,” Henderson said.
Under pressure to produce quick results, Cain recruited more than half a dozen executives he had known at Pillsbury and Burger King.
He hired an advertising firm that had done work for Burger King to revamp Godfather’s image. The new campaign showed people suffering a “pizza emergency” that only Godfather’s could answer. One 30-second spot, for instance, showed an office secretary overcome with a pizza craving just before her lunch break. Everywhere she looks — a pie chart on her computer, the space between the hands of the clock on the wall — she sees pizza. She dashes to a Godfather’s.
Cain had a 100-day plan for turning the company around and carried it with him in a binder. He held a string of one-on-one meetings with employees and collected suggestions. From the list, he plucked ideas such as the “big value” of two pizzas for $12, as well as the “Hot Slice,” a lunchtime product meant to compete with Pizza Hut’s personal pan pizza. He introduced home delivery in certain markets. He tinkered with the crust recipe.
Cain closed scores of low-performing stores, eliminating hundreds of jobs. He settled pending lawsuits with franchisees who had alleged that the company hadn’t honored its agreements with them, but he also warned some other franchisees to improve or update their stores, or else get left behind. As part of a career-long penchant for acronyms and easily digestible slogans — most famously his “9-9-9” tax plan offered years later — he encouraged even entry-level employees to “S.I.N.” when customers complained: Solve. It. Now.
He and his new team endured brutal hours. More than once on Sunday afternoons, the hallways of the company’s headquarters off West Dodge Road echoed with Cain’s booming baritone, as he practiced gospel tunes while he worked.
“We actually came dressed kind of like Army commandos — green shirts, green baseball caps with a target on it,” recalled Larry Gadola, a vice president of development recruited by Cain. The word “focus” was printed in the center of the target. “We were on a mission.”
Although Cain got rid of some managers at Godfather’s, he came to rely heavily on longtime executive Ronald Gartlan, who had a background in accounting and finance and knew the company inside and out. While Cain became the public face of the company, often traveling to stores around the country and maintaining a high profile, Gartlan watched over day-to-day operations. He focused on the sales numbers and kept tabs on the company’s hundreds of franchisees. He knew their likes and dislikes, their quirks and their complaints.
“Herman had the vision of what the company needed to do to go forward,” said Spencer Wiggins, who headed human resources under Cain. “Ron Gartlan, he was a nuts-and-bolts guy.”
Tim McMahon, now a business professor at Creighton University, was the original marketing director for Godfather’s. He later worked for some of its major franchisees. McMahon said Gartlan “kept the place stable financially, kept the rigor in place, while Herman kept the spirit high.”
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