Papa Johns Pizza — Restaurant in Independence

Choose another location, or just buy a better pizza from elsewhere & know that the higher price has value to you for not having to deal with these Yahoos.

This is a horribly operated location. We have now experienced three (3) separate, yet consecutive, horribly-handled orders from this location. The first time our pizza was poorly made. Excessive sauce (we'd even requested light sauce, & it was dripping off each slice), one had almost no cheese while another had too much), & one of the pizzas was significantly under cooked. It was like they made each pizza as a joke, almost in mockery of our custom requests (all of which are available choices through their app). We didn't complain. Mistakes happen, places get busy. We honestly thought we'd gotten someone else's order. After the 2nd order issue we called & the Manager offered to either remake our pizza & deliver it that night, or give our account credit for our next order to be compensated up to the value of that one. We accepted the latter, since the issue with that order was the delivery driver (the pizza arrived smeared all over the inside of each box & every garlic butter sauce pack was open & had drenched the pizzas - as if they had fallen off the seat or slid around violently in the back seat, and he'd forgotten our drinks). Then we call to place an order tonight & find out that the Manager did not "credit our account" and that the Manager there tonight was "only" a "step-in manager " and couldn't do anything for us. So we chose to order carryout from a different location. Unfortunately the call center associate routed our order to this store location, even though they verbally confirmed the order was sent to the Raytown store (different issue, unrelated to this store). We get to this store to pick up our order (yes, after driving to the Raytown store only to find out our order didn't go there) & one of the pizzas were made wrong. Guess what the Manager did? He credited that pizza. After my wife came home & told me this ordeal she'd just gone through, I noticed that the Hawaiian BBQ Chicken pizza didn't appear to have cooked pineapple on it. The pineapple was cool to the touch, & was obviously put on as an afterthought since it wasn't melted into any of the cheese & there was entirely too much on the pizza. I called to speak to the step-in manager about this & ask why he could credit a pizza he'd made wrong, but not the order as a whole to make the previous ones right as had been agreed before with the, real?, Manager. I promptly found he has zero accountability, never once offered a solution, blamed the entire situation on us, & ended up telling me the only person that could fix my problem was a Regional Manager. Who he didn't even give me contact info for. Ridiculous. A Manager without the ability to effectively manage a store, even if that is a temporary assignment, is a horrible way to operate a business. I believe he would've made it right if he could. Though I don't appreciate his attitude when I told him this was his fault as the Manager. I lost my temper hearing him blaming my wife for everything & he ultimately hung up on me. There's a learning opportunity for him there, but this is a continuation of problems associated directly with this location. That temporary Manager is not the common denominator. This location is poorly managed, & potentially the region too, if the "step-in manager" from the NKC store feels justified in treating customers like that. Culture starts at the top & trickles down, after all. Good luck in your dealings with this location if you decide to give it a go! We will...

On August 1, 2024 I ordered two NY style pizzas and cheesy breadsticks for delivery later in the day. One pizza was BBQ with grilled chicken and another was 1/2 Hawaiian and 1/2 pepperoni. I ordered the pizza before 1 p.m. for delivery at 5 p.m. Five o'clock came and went and no pizzas. I called, got a robo helper that said my pizzas should arrive within 5 min. I waited, no pizza. I called at about 5:35 and got a real person who told me that my pizzas had been delivered. I told her that they were not delivered to my home and that if they needed to be made again, I expected my order to be free. She told me they should be there in 15 minutes. Fifteen minutes came and went. No pizzas.

I called again, nearly a full hour after the time the order was supposed to be delivered. Took two calls to get a real person who told me that the delivery driver had originally left with the wrong order but that he was on his way with the correct order. She told me that they could put a credit for a free pizza on my account. I repeated that I expected my order to be free. She didn't commit. Well, the delivery driver finally showed up 6:10 p.m. And guess what? He got a nice tip because I had paid the tip when I placed the order! Lesson learned there. I'll never again tip ahead on a food delivery. Also, the "grilled" chicken on the BBQ pizza was not grilled but diced and breaded chicken. I assume it was just cut-up boneless "wings" and was kinda nasty on a pizza. See the photo below of a couple of pieces we picked off the pizza. Grilled? A lie.

And guess what else? My credit card statement shows that I was charged the entire amount and there's no free pizza credit on my app. My next pizza order will not be placed with this business.

Postscript, about five days later, my next door neighbor was leaving her house at the same time I was. She asked me if I had ordered pizzas a few days earlier. It seems that her son had visited a couple days earlier and found pizzas left on the front porch of the VACANT and overgrown townhouse attached to her townhouse! He retrieved the food and threw it away so it didn't attract critters....

Came to leave a review and after reading through the others realize everything has already been said but here it goes anyway - We ordered from here January 23, 2022 and spent about $80.00 Firstly - NY style pizza is definitely NOT NY style - so don’t get your hopes up - second our garlic knots were overcooked and almost burnt - I called the store to discuss these issues and return the food for better and more properly made food - Heather answered the phone who is allegedly the store manager - she originally tried to say that the order didn’t come from that store “because they hadn’t made garlic knots all day” then when I informed her that this is the store phone number that was listed in my email telling me to call with any issues - she looked for the order under my name and found it - Then she proceeded to tell me that she personally cooked our order and that it was made how it’s supposed to be made - she also told me the knots weren’t overcooked when she took them out of the oven - As if we cooked them some more with our oven that we DON’T have here in a clinic! She was very argumentative and unyielding about my our dissatisfaction with the food - I tried multiple times to tell her that the NY style pepperoni pizza looked the same as the regular pizza we ordered when the crust should have been different - yet she kept arguing with me about the size even though I didn’t complain once about the size - Not only did she not make sense but she sounded very sleepy - y’all should check on her - regardless we were stuck with overcooked food because she refused to accept that anything was wrong with it - we will never order from there again - they really act like people don’t have options out here. ———- photos listed...