A new Papa Johns has opened in St. Augustine, and the man behind it once delivered pizzas for the same chain to help pay for college. Nadeem Bajwa now owns Bajco Florida Papa Johns, which operates 28 locations throughout northeast Florida, and the new St. Augustine store is counted as his 192nd location overall.
From Delivery Driver to Franchise Owner
Bajwa immigrated to the United States from Pakistan in 1991, according to cnbc.com. While attending college in Indiana, he worked several jobs, including delivering pizza for Papa John's, the outlet reports. That early experience behind the wheel eventually turned into ownership: with help from family and bank loans, Bajwa opened his first Papa John's store in East Liverpool, Ohio, in July 2002, per the same report.
As reported by the St. Augustine Record, Bajwa now works separately from Papa John's corporate-owned locations, running his own franchise operation under the Bajco Florida name. The newspaper's headline frames the St. Augustine opening as his 192nd store total, though a separate snippet from the same outlet describes Bajco Florida Papa Johns as operating 192 stores across 11 states — slightly different framing that the available reporting does not fully reconcile.
A Bigger Number in Earlier Reports
That 192 figure sits awkwardly next to other counts of Bajwa's holdings. Cnbc.com reported in August 2025 that Bajwa had more than 270 Papa Johns locations across the country, while Franchise Times has described The Bajco Group as one of Papa Johns' largest domestic franchisees, with more than 275 units spread across 12 states. An even earlier account from Nation's Restaurant News put the number at 127 locations across seven states and Canada. The reporting available does not explain whether these figures reflect different points in time, different corporate structures, or different counting methods — so the discrepancy remains unresolved.
Expansion Tied to a 2028 Growth Deal
Some of the growth traces back to an April 2024 announcement from Papa Johns International, which said it had deepened its partnership with Bajwa and The Bajco Group to open 50 new restaurants by 2028. That release described the expansion as reaching Bajco Group markets across the Midwest, as well as Arizona, Pennsylvania and Florida, and noted the deal was adding to the more than 200 restaurants the franchisee and his team operated at the time. Franchise Times later reported that the Bajco Group opened 10 units in 2024 and was scheduled to add 12 more the following year, with Bajwa pushing internally for as many as 15.
Bajwa has told cnbc.com that his long-term goal is to reach 500 restaurant locations, a target that remains an ambition rather than an achieved milestone. The push for more stores comes even as Papa Johns has faced headwinds systemwide: Franchise Times reported that the company's North American same-store sales fell 3 percent year over year in its first-quarter earnings, following a 4 percent decline in the fourth quarter of 2024.
What the New Store Means Locally
For St. Augustine, the opening adds another option to a franchise footprint that already spans 28 Bajco Florida locations throughout the northeast part of the state. Whether the exact scale of Bajwa's broader business is 192 stores or well over 270, as different reports have indicated, his path from a college student delivering pizzas to a multi-state franchise owner is the throughline connecting the earlier coverage of his career to this latest local opening.
