Growth and Giving: Franchisee Scales Operations While Developing Future Owners

Name: Wade Oney
Title: President
Company: Bam-Bam Pizza Inc.
No. of units by brand: 96 Papa Johns, 8 Qdoba, 8 Starbucks
Age: 64
Family: Wife Elizabeth
Years in franchising: 41
Years in current position: 34

Wade Oney is the Spirit of Franchising MVP (Most Valuable Performer) for extraordinary and enduring performance, growth, and community giving.

There have been several constants throughout Wade Oney’s four-decade career in the restaurant industry: pizza, explosive brand growth, and a desire to create opportunities for others through franchise ownership.

Oney started as a store assistant with Domino’s Pizza in 1981 and earned 11 promotions over the next decade, eventually overseeing operations for all franchise and corporate stores nationwide. He moved to Orlando in 1992 with a plan to become a franchisee for the company. However, Papa Johns lured him with an offer to oversee the development of the then-emerging brand in Florida. He became the company’s COO two years later.

“What a tremendous train ride it was to go from 400 stores to almost 4,000 with Domino’s,” Oney says. “As a young guy, I took it all in, and I was part of heavy, heavy growth. I learned so much at Domino’s that I was able to apply at Papa Johns in helping them grow.”

Despite having one of the top leadership positions during a formative time of the company’s growth, Oney still wanted to be a franchisee himself. He was given half of the Orlando market to develop as a franchisee and served in the dual role of franchise owner and member of the corporate team.

“I was always interested in being an owner,” says the Spirit of Franchising MVP. “There was no specific time when I wanted to be a franchise owner; it was always a goal. I had such a blast building teams and working for the corporation, either Domino’s or even more so Papa Johns. I loved the ride. When it became an option to do both, I thought it was a tremendous opportunity.”

After helping grow Papa Johns from 160 to more than 2,000 locations, family considerations and a heavy travel schedule led Oney to step aside as COO in 2000 to focus exclusively on being a franchisee. He owned approximately 35 stores at the time, which he has scaled to 96 units today.

Oney has leveraged the growth of his restaurants to become an active part of the markets they serve. His franchise group, Bam-Bam Pizza Inc., supports local schools, PTAs, youth sports teams, and police departments across Florida through fundraising and pizza giveaways. Oney says that giving back to the community helps build stronger loyalty with his customers.

He is also proud of a program he created in which managers, supervisors, and members of the executive team of his restaurants can purchase a minority share of multiple stores within their market. It is a mutually beneficial plan. The employees secure additional income through partial ownership, and Oney keeps people who are invested in the success of the business.

“It helps them know it is a team and a career and not just a job,” Oney says. “You can say it is generous, but I also gain from it by retaining talented team members. That is a pretty cool thing that has happened, and our people love it.”

His plan over the next five to 15 years is to identify key people to become majority owners at the stores to run the business on their own. As he shifts to a minority role, Oney looks forward to continuing to build the culture and legacy of his franchise group while setting team members up for long-term success.

MVP QUESTIONS

Why do you think you were recognized with this award? Because we have been a supporter of growth within the Papa Johns network for several years and an advocate of helping the brand move forward. We also have a diverse franchise umbrella.

How have you raised the bar in your own company? Between marketing, training, and new stores, we work hard to invest in our system and people. One of the things I think is cool is that, over the past 30-plus years, we have allowed our managers, supervisors, and executive team the opportunity to buy and earn shares. About a third to half of our managers, supervisors, and executive team have a piece of ownership in our company.

What innovations have you created and used to build your company? Innovation in building culture and investing as much as we can into our people has allowed us to offer them the opportunity to stay with us for a long time. You want to keep your best people as long as you can, which ties into our ownership plan.

What core values do you think helped you win this award? Loyalty, dedication, and being highly competitive.

How important is community involvement to you and your company? Our community involvement is extensive. Our fundraising and programs have been highly successful. Our work with local schools in Florida has been well recognized. That includes sponsorships of sports teams and the Nifty Fifty fundraising campaign, which has generated more than $5 million for local community sponsorships. Each year, we give away a significant amount of free coupons to hometown heroes in our markets, and we work with as many police departments as we can to give tickets out to kids when they catch them doing the right thing. The ticket is actually a Papa Johns pizza, not a citation.

What leadership qualities are important to you and your team? Loyalty, dedication, competitiveness. These are not only values our team upholds, but characteristics we instill in our leaders. As we hire and help people grow within the company, we try to remind them that if they aren’t doing well, then maybe we haven’t done enough as a company to train and lead them. We lean on second and third chances, where we can give people a support system and an opportunity to grow. We tell our people that if they want to do something else, we will try to help them find another opportunity or run their own business and assist them in achieving their goals. We have done that for years. Several times, the individuals come back, and they are even more loyal and enthusiastic.

PERSONAL

First job: Mowing lawns and working on a farm when I was 16.

Formative influences/events: My wife is a big influence on me, and my parents have inspired me greatly. Domino’s executives Mike Orcutt, Dave Black, and Pete Shipman were early mentors for me in the pizza business. They impacted me quite a bit.

Key accomplishments: When I was a manager with Domino’s in 1981, we opened the first location to exceed $20,000 in opening week sales, and two members of the corporate team came to present me with a Rolex in celebration. We’ve won Franchisee of the Year multiple times from the Papa Johns network, and I was fortunate enough to be inducted into the Papa Johns Hall of Fame many years ago. We were also very excited to open 10 Papa Johns location in 2025.

Biggest current challenge: The biggest challenge in today’s environment is finding exceptional people who are committed to the business and eager to be trained. We always strive to grow and build our culture, and that starts with finding qualified team members who not only believe in your company as much as you believe in them, but also lean into the guidance and training that is provided to them.

Next big goal: Increase sales by an additional 5% and improve our margins so that we can deliver better bonuses and do more for our team. I am also very excited about opening our farm animal sanctuary later this year.

First turning point in your career: The first lesson early in my career was vivid. I was sure, as a young manager, that my supervisor could give me anyone to train to get ready to be at the manager level. What I didn’t realize as a 19-year-old at the time was that the other person also had to have the same goal and be vested in moving up the ranks. I was absolutely wrong. It’s a two-way street.

Best business decision: Making the decision to join Papa Johns. I had a great career with Domino’s Pizza before that, but when I moved to Florida to be a franchisee, things changed. I got a great offer from Papa Johns, and they gave me a chance to be a franchisee and work for corporate at the same time. Taking that role was the best move I’ve made.

Hardest lesson learned: I got a promotion once that required me to work in a different area. After the next promotion, I closely watched the area that I had left, and it slowly went downhill. Sales and margins faltered a bit, and momentarily, I thought that was a good thing for me. It made me think I made an impact while I was there. At the same time, a mentor of mine said to me, “Do you realize that maybe you didn’t train those teams as well as you should have to sustain their growth without you there?” That changed my perspective entirely. I realized I didn’t do nearly the job I thought I did to set my old team up for success.

Work week: It dramatically changes from week to week. There are times when I can put the majority of hours into our animal sanctuary, and other weeks, the franchise companies have the majority of my time. With all our growth and challenges within the past year, the range per week was 35 to70 hours, which has been a blast.

Exercise/workout: I love to golf and do a good amount of stretching along with workouts.

Best advice you ever got: Look in the mirror and not out the window. That means be accountable before you decide to blame someone else. I’m big on accountability and not being a victim of circumstance.

What’syour passioninbusiness? I am passionate about investing in my team members and creating a positive culture where people can grow.

How do you balance life and work? Having the right team and structure in place. When I need to focus on work, I have a fantastic family and friends I can rely on. When I need to focus on life, I know I can trust my restaurant teams to support me.

Guilty pleasure: Cakes and cookies. I love baking. I used to love making Nestlé Toll House cookies for my mom and dad.

Favorite book: The One-Minute Manager by Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson.

Favorite movie: “Iron Man.” He is my favorite Marvel character, and I love comic books. “The Notebook” is another great movie.

What do most people not know about you? As a teenager, I was involved in the dog show business and had my own set of clients.

Pet peeve: When restaurant teams don’t pay attention to detail in the presentation of food, especially pizza quality. I love to check the pizza in the boxes that are about to go to the customer to ensure quality standards. I want to know that we don’t need to remake it.

What did you want to be when you grew up? It started with being a veterinarian, and then I wanted to be a professional golfer. But once I got into the pizza business, I never looked back.

Last vacation: I visited London and Berlin at the end of 2025.

Person you’d most like to have lunch with: Arnold Palmer. I met him multiple times but would love to have sat down with him.

MANAGEMENT

Business philosophy: Work hard for yourself. Work harder for others.

Management method or style: Invest in your people and allow teams the opportunity to grow.

Greatest challenge: It takes a lot of time to find and develop talented team members who provide consistent, impressive customer service.

How do others describe you? I think others would describe me as competitive yet fair, honest, detail-oriented, caring for others, and pushing to better myself and others.

Have you ever been in a mentor-mentee relationship? What did you learn? Yes. Mike Orcutt, Dave Black, and Pete Shipman were all very influential early in my career at Domino’s, and they have been mentors of mine in the pizza space.

One thing you’re looking to do better: We are always looking for ways to improve our company culture and take it to the next level.

How you give your team room to innovate and experiment: Fortunately, we have maintained the sales and capital to invest in the team, which allows for a lot of innovation and experimentation, like new and creative marketing strategies.

How close are you to operations? I’m still very close to operations through managers and supervisors. However, I’m not able to visit nearly as many stores as I would like.

What are the two most important things you rely on from your franchisor? I lean on them most to stay healthy as a company, to lead us in marketing and operations, and to hold franchisees and themselves accountable to the consumer and the rest of our network.

What are the two most important things you rely on from your vendors? I trust my vendors to supply quality services and fair pricing.

Have you changed your marketing strategy in response to the economy? How? As the economy changes, we strategically increased spending digitally and socially while adjusting our TV budget to level out.

How is social media affecting your business? Social media is a great tool to promote our businesses, especially on a regional level.

How are you using technology, like AI, to manage your business? We have dipped our toes in the water at this point with AI and other tech resources, but there is room for more implementation.

How do you hire and fire? We hire strategically. We look for employees who want to climb the ladder. If we have the unfortunate situation of a team member falling short of expectations, we do everything in our power to improve their performance.

How do you train and retain? We invest significantly in the training and development of our teams. Retaining our best talent comes from providing the right support as well as offering opportunities for growth and ownership. We offer the chance for managers and other top-level team members to get a stake in ownership, and we are thrilled that we have so many team members who have taken that opportunity.

How do you deal with problem employees? First, we look at ourselves to see where we are falling short as leaders. From there, we enact counseling and action plans in an effort to break through and develop that individual’s skill set.

Fastest way into your doghouse: Not holding oneself accountable for actions and results.

BOTTOM LINE

Annual revenue: $160 million.

2026 goals: Increase sales by anadditional5% and improve our margins so that we can deliver better monetary incentives and do more for our employees.

Growthmeter: How do you measure your growth? Sales, profits, and the number of stores we own.

Visionmeter: Where do you want to be in five years? 10 years? Get more wealth and ownership into the hands of the company team members who have worked hard for it. I’ve been so blessed over so many years, which is ultimately why we wanted to offer opportunities to get a stake in ownership for our company teams.

Do you have brands in different segments? Why/why not? We started our first pizza company and then went to other franchise brands. One of our passions is to grow our teams and get people involved in the business. In owning different brands outside of Papa Johns, we wanted to make sure they were low-risk opportunities to protect our team members from any losses.

How is the economy in your region(s) affecting you, your employees, your customers? A changing economy makes us more diligent in our spending and investing. We always aim to uphold our values and care for our customers and teams as fairly as possible.

Are you experiencing economic growth in your market? Yes. Most of that has happened through a lot of our new stores. We opened 10 Papa Johns stores in 2025, and we are seeing positive reactions from the community and healthy competition in the pizza space. There are several pockets of growth we are seeing across our Florida markets.

How do changes in the economy affect the way you do business? We are more careful about extracurricular funds. We’ve evolved and been more thoughtful when it comes to spending.

How do you forecast for your business? There are a lot of unknowns in today’s economy, and we do our best to plan for these surprises with strategic reallocation.

What are the best sources for capital expansion? The best sources for capital expansion usually come from business earnings and our partners.

Experience with private equity, local banks, national banks, other institutions? Why/why not? I’ve used local and regional banks. I’ve been very fortunate because we’ve had a strong enough balance sheet to get loans without having to pay silly numbers for interest rates.

What are you doing to take care of your employees? We strive to care for our employees through innovative development training, fair pay, performance-based bonuses, and offering ownership opportunities.

How are you handling rising employee costs (payroll, minimum wage, healthcare, etc.)? This is a challenge we are always working to resolve. We are committed to caring for our employees, and if needed, we lower profitability overall.

What laws and regulations are affecting your business, and how are you dealing with them? The state of Florida leads the country in personal injury lawsuits. We care deeply for our employees and always handle these situations with care, but when this is taken advantage of for the wrong reasons, we have to find the best course of action that considers all parties.

How do you reward/recognize top-performing employees? Our top-performing employees set the standard for our teams. We always reward our hard workers with bonuses, promotions, and growth opportunities.

What kind of exit strategy do you have in place? We love the business and want to share this opportunity with our dedicated employees. As executives retire, we look at ways to get more ownership in the hands of key team members, keeping the culture intact.