Pizza Hut


Pizza Hut, LLC is an American multinational pizza restaurant chain and international franchise founded in 1958 in Wichita, Kansas, by brothers Dan and Frank Carney. The chain, headquartered in Plano, Texas, operates 19,866 restaurants worldwide as of 2023.
While studying at Wichita State University, the Carneys opened their first location, which quickly expanded to six outlets within a year. The brand began franchising in 1959, and its distinctive building style was designed by Chicago architect George Lindstrom in 1963. Pizza Hut experienced significant growth, including the acquisition by PepsiCo in 1977, followed by a spin-off into Tricon Global Restaurants, Inc., later renamed Yum! Brands in 2002, who are the current owners.

History

Pizza Hut was launched on May 31, 1958, by two brothers, Dan and Frank Carney, both Wichita State students, as a single location in Wichita, Kansas. Six months later they opened a second outlet, and within a year they were operating six locations. The brothers began franchising in 1959.
One early employee was future Pro Football Hall of Fame head coach Bill Parcells, who had worked for the company while a college student and football player at Wichita State University. Parcells was considering a franchise for a career, but instead chose to enter coaching, eventually becoming a head coach in the National Football League.
The iconic Pizza Hut building style with the distinctive red roof was introduced in 1969, and was later incorporated into the corporate logo.
PepsiCo acquired Pizza Hut in November 1977. On May 30, 1997, PepsiCo spun off Pizza Hut, along with Taco Bell and Kentucky Fried Chicken, into a new company named Tricon Global Restaurants, Inc. The company assumed the name of Yum! Brands on May 22, 2002.
The first Pizza Hut restaurant east of the Mississippi River was opened in Athens, Ohio, in 1966 by Lawrence Berberick and Gary Meyers.
In the early 1970s, Pizza Hut opened several other chains to diversify its menu. These included the fast-food Mexican eatery Taco Kid; hamburger restaurant Next Door; steakhouse Flaming Steer; and barbecue restaurant Sutphen's. All four ventures were unsuccessful and closed by the end of the decade.
In August 1994, Pizza Hut and the Santa Cruz Operation announced, a pilot program in the Santa Cruz area that allowed consumers to use their own computer to order pizza delivery from a local Pizza Hut restaurant, with connection being made over the Internet to a central Pizza Hut server in Wichita, Kansas. The PizzaNet application software was developed by SCO's Professional Services group. PizzaNet was based on the first commercially licensed and bundled Internet operating system, SCO Global Access.
On March 31, 2011, Priszm, who was the largest franchisee for Pizza Hut restaurants in Canada at the time, went into bankruptcy protection in Ontario and British Columbia.
In 2015, the oldest continuously operating Pizza Hut, which was the restaurant located in the Aggieville District of Manhattan, Kansas, closed after having opened as the 8th location in 1960.
The company announced a rebrand that began on November 19, 2014, in an effort to increase sales, which had dropped in the previous two years. The menu was expanded to introduce various items such as crust flavors and 11 new specialty pizzas, and the company's employee uniforms were redesigned. In 2017, Pizza Hut was listed by UK-based company Richtopia at number 24 in the list of 200 Most Influential Brands in the World.
On June 25, 2019, Pizza Hut announced it was bringing back the logo and the red roof design that was used from 1976 until 1999.
On August 7, 2019, Pizza Hut announced its intention to close about 500 of its 7,496 dine-in restaurants in the US, by the middle of 2021.
On August 18, 2020, Pizza Hut announced it would be closing up to 300 restaurants after the bankruptcy of NPC International, one of its largest franchisees. In March 2021, Flynn Restaurant Group acquired NPC's 937 Pizza Hut locations.

Branding

A significant part of the Pizza Hut brand is the red roof emblem. It was introduced as a distinctive part of the store building design in 1969, and was later incorporated into the logo. Accounts differ as to its origin; some sources state that the buildings were designed in 1963 by the Chicago architect George Lindstrom, while others state that the buildings were designed by the Wichita architect and college friend of the Carney brothers, Richard D. Burke, for the fee of $100 per store built to this design.
The Pizza Hut logo on roadside signage at this time featured "Pizza Pete", a stereotypical Italian chef mascot, but this character was later replaced by a graphical red roof emblem. Some people consider that the red roof emblem resembles a wide-brimmed red hat, especially in German-speaking countries, where the word Hut means hat.

Logo evolution

Concept

In 1975, Pizza Hut began testing concepts with Applegate's Landing. with restaurants that featured Colonial-style exteriors and eclectic interiors that included a truck with a salad bar in the bed. The chain offered much of the same pizza and pasta dishes, with some additions like hamburgers and bread pudding. Applegate's Landing went defunct in the mid-1980s except for one location in McPherson, Kansas, that closed in late 1995.
An upscale concept was unveiled in 2004, called Pizza Hut Italian Bistro. At 50 US locations, the Bistro is similar to a traditional Pizza Hut but with a menu that included previously unseen items, such as penne pasta, chicken pomodoro, and toasted sandwiches. Instead of black, white, and red, Bistro locations feature a burgundy and tan motif. In some cases, Pizza Hut has replaced a red roof location with the new concept. Pizza Hut Express locations are fast food restaurants that offer a limited menu with many products not seen at a traditional Pizza Hut. These stores are often paired in a colocation with WingStreet in the US and Canada, or other sibling brands such as KFC or Taco Bell and found on college campuses, food courts, theme parks, bowling alleys, and within stores such as Target.
Vintage locations featuring the red roof, designed by architect Richard D. Burke, can be found in the United States and Canada; several exist in the UK, Australia, and Mexico. In his book Orange Roofs, Golden Arches, Phillip Langdon wrote that the Pizza Hut red roof architecture "is something of a strange object – considered outside the realm of significant architecture, yet swiftly reflecting shifts in popular taste and unquestionably making an impact on daily life. These buildings rarely show up in architectural journals, yet they have become some of the most numerous and conspicuous in the United States today."
In 2014, Curbed.com reported, "Despite Pizza Hut's decision to discontinue the form when they made the shift toward delivery, there were still 6,304 traditional units standing as of 2004, each with the shingled roofs and trapezoidal windows signifying equal parts suburban comfort and strip-mall anomie." This building style was common in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The name "red roof" is somewhat anachronistic now since many locations have brown roofs. Dozens of these restaurants have closed or been relocated or rebuilt.
Many of the older locations with the red roof design serve beer or have a full bar, music from a jukebox, and in some cases an arcade. In the mid-1980s, the company moved into other formats, including delivery or carryout and the fast food "Express" model.
In June 2024, some locations reportedly brought back the all you can eat lunch buffet.

Products

In North America, Pizza Hut has notably sold:
  • Pan pizza, baked in a pan with a crispy edge;
  • "Stuffed crust" pizza, with the outermost edge wrapped around a cylinder of mozzarella cheese;
  • "Hand-tossed", more like traditional pizzeria crusts;
  • "Thin 'N Crispy", a thin, crisp dough which was Pizza Hut's original style;
  • Dippin' Strips pizza, a pizza cut into small strips that can be dipped into a number of sauces;
  • The P'Zone, a pizza-calzone hybrid with a marinara dipping sauce that comes in plain, Supremo, Meaty, and pepperoni;
  • The Bigfoot pizza, its largest product;
  • The Priazzo, a pie like pizza stuffed with pizza ingredients.
The "stuffed crust" pizza was introduced on March 26, 1995. By the end of the year, it had become one of their most popular lines.
Regional differences are seen in the products and bases. The company has localized to Southeast Asia with a baked rice dish called Curry Zazzle.
On May 9, 2008, Pizza Hut created "The Natural" pizza, which featured natural ingredients and was sold in Seattle, Denver and Dallas. This was discontinued on October 27, 2009, in the Dallas market.
Pizza Hut developed a pizza to be delivered to the International Space Station in 2001. It was vacuum-sealed and about 6 in in diameter to fit in the station's oven. It was launched on a Soyuz and eaten by Yuri Usachov in orbit.
In the 2010s, the chain saw a downturn in profits. In 2015, the franchise stated it would be pumping more capital into its London branches. Pizza Hut is installing cocktail bars in its London branches as part of a £60 million bid to win back "the Nando's generation".
In January 2019, Pizza Hut announced it had expanded beer delivery to 300 locations across the US., with plans to expand to 1,000 locations by the middle of the year.
In March 2019, Pizza Hut announced the return of the P'Zone after a hiatus of several years.
In March 2020, Pizza Hut Hong Kong announced that it had partnered with furniture retailer IKEA on a joint venture. IKEA launched a new side table called SÄVA, which was designed to resemble a pizza saver. The table would be boxed in packaging resembling a pizza box, and the building instructions included a suggestion to order a Swedish meatball pizza from Pizza Hut, which would contain the same meatballs served in IKEA restaurants. A 2021 menu addition, designed to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the introduction of stuffed crust pizza, was "nothing but the stuffed crust", a ring of dough filled with cheese.