Guide

Nadeem Bajwa on Going From Dishwasher to 276 Papa John's

By Wilson K Lee, updated October 2026 · How I get these numbers

Nadeem Bajwa was 21, new to the United States from Pakistan, and had never held a job in his life when he started washing dishes. “Dishwasher was first job. $4.25 an hour,” he told me. Then came delivery driving, a short spell at another pizza brand, and Papa John’s, where he ran stores as an operating partner and later came to own the very restaurants he once delivered for.

Today he is Co-Founder and CEO of Bajco Group, which he started with his two brothers in 2002. By the count he was introduced with at On the Clock, it runs 276 Papa John’s, more than any other franchisee of the brand in North America. Next to the pizza it has grown a content studio, a construction team, an accounting firm and a call center.

We talked at On the Clock 2026 in Atlanta. Nadeem has been every size a small owner goes through, and that is why I made sure to ask him about the middle. My own business, 720 Sweets, went from one dessert shop to seven before I sold it, so the stretch around five stores is one I know well.

Where our conversation went

Four degrees, and pizza still paid more. He calls himself a mediocre student from a family of doctors and bankers, yet he earned a degree in international commerce overseas and later a US triple major in accounting, marketing and management. With all that, the corporate world could not compete. In his words, “I couldn’t get any offer making what I was making as a pizza guy.” So he stayed in pizza, and the reason he gives for everything that followed is short: “Humility and passion is the key.”

Two or three stores in, the switch to people. As an operating partner he was already doing the owner’s job, but he says owning the place still changes how you think. After two or three stores he knew he needed help, and he was picky about who. The hard part, as he tells it, was finding people with his own passion and humility. That is when the name for it stuck: “It’s not pizza business, it’s people business.”

The question that grew the plan. The first plan was 10 to 12 restaurants, enough for a family business run by brothers. Then the young people he was bringing up from inside kept asking him the same thing: “What is after that?” Answering them pushed the plan to 20, then 50, then 100. The result shows on his field leadership team, where “the minimum tenure is 15 years,” and one of his non-negotiables with them is loyalty, because “loyalty is not a one way street.”

The hell zone at around five. “They call it hell zone,” he said, meaning the size where there is not enough cash flow to pay a person to watch over the stores, yet you are too big to cover them on your own. He planned to wait until ten units for a full time operator and ended up promoting someone after five. Even at store two he had trained a person to run some parts of the day when he was out, because “you need to develop somebody.”

Side businesses that grew out of pizza. Margins kept shrinking, so he looked for costs he could take back. A call center built inside one of his own restaurants now works as a Papa John’s vendor for about 2,000 restaurants in North America. The accounting arm, which began with the family doing its own books, has over 100 accountants serving 15 brands and almost 1,600 restaurants, and building 15 stores in house “saved about over $100,000.” His summary of the whole story: “Nothing was planned.”

Content, and the page he wants every morning. He told me the goal of talking to your team and your customers has stayed the same, but there is now so much noise that getting through is its own job. That is why Bajco has a ten person studio in Pakistan, though he warns, “If it is not managed well, it can backfire.” And when he thinks about what he was missing as an owner, he describes a one page report that prints in 30 seconds and shows the day before in no more than ten minutes.

What I would steal for a two or three store business

Nadeem runs a few hundred restaurants, but several of the habits he told me about started when he had two or three. Here is what I would put to work at that size.

Have an answer ready for “what is after that?” That one question took his plan from 12 restaurants to 100. Your best shift lead will ask it too, maybe not out loud. Write down the next step for each role in your shop, from shift lead to assistant manager to general manager, and what it takes to move up. Then tell people. A good person with no next step usually finds one somewhere else.

Train your right hand before you sign the next lease. By the time he opened store two, he had someone covering parts of the day. You do not need a full general manager for that. Write down the three things that go wrong when you are not in the building, and teach those three first. That is your training plan for the next 90 days.

Plan for five while you are still at two. He planned to hire above store level at ten and needed it at five. The hell zone shows up before the cash does. Pick the month you expect to need your first person above store level, then start setting aside part of each store’s profit toward that salary now, so the hire is a plan when it comes.

Read your biggest bills as ideas. The call center and the construction team began as costs he wanted down, and the accounting firm grew out of work the family already did itself. Sort the last three months of money you paid to outside companies, largest first. For each one, ask whether people you already employ could do it well. Most of the time the honest answer is no, and that is fine. The one yes is worth a lot.

Build your own morning page. He wants yesterday on one page that prints in 30 seconds. At two shops that can be a single sheet: sales, labor hours, and one line from each manager about what went wrong. Set it up this week and read it before you do anything else each morning.

None of this needs his scale. It needs the habits he built when he was small. If you want more on the owner side of that, my guide to the money making mindsets of profitable restaurant owners goes further.

Going deeper on Workstream’s blog

I wrote two longer articles from this interview for Workstream. Each takes one half of the conversation.

• Why Nadeem Bajwa Stopped Calling It a Pizza Business is about his people side: what changed at two or three stores, why his leaders stay 15 years or more, and how he keeps success from cutting him off from his team.
• 5 Moves Nadeem Bajwa Made on the Way to 276 Papa John’s is about his operating side: the hell zone, a right hand in each store, the call center and accounting arms, and why he backs the people who protect the business.

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