There is a narrative; if what you "read" is the typical discussion, everybody is just saying the same thing over and over, and given the paucity of actual information, it's mostly just from a couple of speeches Cain gave, and some quotes from a couple of the people involved with him.
The records from Godfather's are hard to come by. They were a subsidiary of another company, and then a private company, and those who could release information haven't.
But we do have a pretty good picture of the sales figures before they became independent, and we have the sales figures from afterwards, if you can dig through all sorts of obscure financial stuff. I can't original-source that stuff, so I've been finding secondary sources who can provide that information.
Basically, during the time Cain was at the head of Godfathers, their revenue was flat; it dropped when adjusted for inflation.
His goal for the company was to grow it to 1000 stores, but when he left it was at barely half that number.
The internet is great, you can learn all sorts of stuff. Here's one link that was interesting: Godfather's Pizza Company History:
Development of the chain continued until its peak in 1984, when the company amounted to 911 Godfather's restaurants, generating annual sales of $365 million. [this is before Cain]Note that last phrase: "according to". We don't have filed paperwork that shows when they had profits or not. It is generally assumed that having settled the lawsuits and cut out the non-performing and underperforming stores, the remainder did earn a profit, with much lower revenue.In 1986 Pillsbury appointed Herman Cain, an employee of Pillsbury Company since 1977, as the new Godfather's president. Cain had earned an impressive reputation previously with the Burger King restaurant chain division in the Philadelphia region, where he had rescued several of their operations. At the outset of his efforts to enhance stability for Godfather's, Cain worked to settle several lawsuits filed by franchise owners, disposed of money-losing units, arranged for many of its units to provide home-delivery service, and introduced new products such as bacon-cheese-burger pizzas. Under his management the company showed profits for the first time in three years, according to Stephen Madden of Fortune.
In January of 1988 Pillsbury announced that, because of weakening corporate profits ...I've seen several detailed discussions of this buyout, and none have priced it above $40 million, and others have said $30 million or less. So I think $100 million is way more than they paid -- but my point here is that we don't know a lot about the finances of Godfather's, and nobody who has access to that information is divulging it.
"the restaurants that Pillsbury plans [ed] to divest itself of have been a $150 million drain on operating revenues and about $20 million drain on profits."
...
As part of the restructuring--and prompted by takeover rumors--Pillsbury encouraged a leveraged buyout of Godfather's by a group of senior managers, led by President and CEO Herman Cain and Executive Vice-President and COO Ronald B. Gartlan. The purchase price was not disclosed, but was estimated by some analysts at $100 million.
At that point, Godfather's ranked fifth in the pizza segment lineup, having slipped from its third place ranking in 1985. [This is similar to what I've learned from other sources -- so here is the "5th largest pizza chain' from my statement, if you like]That's pretty much all from that article related to sales figures, but you should read the whole thing -- it answers a question someone asked before, why did Cain leave Godfather's (at least it gives one answer):
...
chain continued to face considerable competitive challenges and reported that although most of the company-owned businesses were profitable, many of its 420 franchisees, which paid royalties to the parent company, were not. Cain told James Scarpa of Restaurant Business Magazine that Godfather's aim over the next several years was to move from fifth to fourth place in the ranking.
Here's a chart of sales numbers, in millions, but again I can't be sure the numbers are perfect:
- 1983: 340
- 1984: 365
- 1985: 325
- 1986: 275
- 1987: 260
- 1988: 242
- 1989: 225
- 1990: 229
- 1991: 231
- 1992: 242
- 1993: 250
- 1994: 244
- 1995: 260
- 1996: 265
- 1997: 271
- 1998: 280
- 1999: 280
- 2000: 288
- 2001: 280
- 2002: 287
So far as I can tell, in 1996 it was the 8th-largest pizza chain, and by 2002 it was the 11th-largest. I think it's back up to the 8th-largest now, but I haven't researched it that much.
1996 rankings (some revenue numbers are from different years, I can't a financial source that thought this was interesting enough to pull this info together:
- Pizza Hut: 6,100
- Domino's Pizza: 2,800
- Little Ceasers (1995) : 1,100
- Papa Johns (1994/1999) : 297/1,430
- Sbarro (1995) : 319
- Showbiz Pizza Time (1994) : 267
- Round Table (1994-est) : 267
- Godfathers (1996) : 265
- Pizza Inn (1994) : 218
Here is a business week article discussing Cain: Chewing Over Herman Cain's Pizza Past:
Publicly available figures show Godfather's sales fluctuated from about $225 million to about $275 million during his time there, sometimes rising, sometimes falling, never surging. Godfather's didn't go out of business; neither did it become a major combatant in the pizza wars, and Pillsbury sold Godfather's to Cain and a group of investors in 1988.
...
In a November 1987 interview with Restaurant Business, Cain predicted Godfather's would "exceed 1,000" restaurants within three years and take on its larger rivals. It wasn't to be. "We were smaller and we could be nimble," Wiggins says, "but cash flow was the issue for us. Going up against Little Caesars, Pizza Hut, and Domino's—we just found it daunting."By the time Cain left the company in 1996 to head the National Restaurant Assn., the industry's powerful lobbying group, the number of Godfather's restaurants had dwindled to the low 500s.
Last link; this is another from the same group that did the Godfather's thing I started with, this one is Sbarros, but has 1996 information for a lot of companies: : The second tier of pizza chains included Papa John's International (730 restaurants in 21 states), with reported sales of $297.6 million for 1994; Sbarro, with $296 million; and ShowBiz Pizza Time (327 units) with $267.8 million. Round Table, a private company with 560 locations, was believed to have sales in that range, and Pizza Inn reported sales of about $218 million from its 485 restaurants. Chains with 1994 sales between $100 and $200 million comprised a third tier, and included Uno Restaurant Corporation, Shakey's Pizza, and Bertucci's Brick Oven Pizzeria. Pizza Hut, with 9,566 restaurants in the United States and 2,989 international units, had sales of $6.9 billion in 1994. Domino's Pizza (5,100 domestic restaurants and 860 overseas) reported sales of $2.5 billion. Little Caesar had sales of $2 billion from its 4,600 locations ...
Note they don't even mention Godfather's, because their revenue wasn't publicized, but would probably have fallen in the "2nd tier".
Last link. Here's a picture showing the 2003 pizza rankings, and it includes 2002's (the last year Cain was involved). You can see Godfather's was 11th in 2002, and 10th in 2003. SO there you have it -- during Cain's term, they started 5th, went to 8th before he left as CEO, and were 11th when he left the company completely. There were 3-6 pizza companies which were better led during that time period.
I'm serious about vetting candidates. I hope this shows that I've done a LOT of research on Cain, as I have on all the candidates. When Cain tells me to look at his time at Godfather's to see that he is qualified, I do it. We know EVERYTHING about Perry's 10-year governorship, because everything a governor does is public and publisized. That's not true for heads of private companies, so you have to really dig.
This isn't to say Cain wasn't a good CEO, or a good leader. There are millions of people who couldn't run a pizza company. He didn't go broke. But he wasn't the best conservative running a pizza company -- Monaghan was much better, and actually CREATED his pizza company from scratch, it wasn't handed to him.