Pizza Hut is an American multinational restaurant chain and international franchise founded in 1958 in Wichita, Kansas by Dan and Frank Carney. It provides pizza and other Italian-American dishes, including pasta, side dishes and desserts.
The chain has 18,703 restaurants worldwide as of December 31, 2019,[2] making it the world's largest pizza chain in number of locations.
It is a subsidiary of Yum! Brands, Inc., one of the world's largest restaurant companies.[2]
History
Pizza Hut was founded on June 15, 1958, by two brothers, Dan and Frank Carney, both Wichita State students, as a single location in Wichita, Kansas.[4] Six months later they opened a second outlet and within a year they had six Pizza Hut restaurants. The brothers began franchising in 1959. The iconic Pizza Hut building style was designed in 1963 by Chicago architect George Lindstrom[5] and was implemented in 1969.[6] PepsiCo acquired Pizza Hut in November 1977.[7][8] Twenty years later, Pizza Hut (alongside Taco Bell and Kentucky Fried Chicken) were spun off by PepsiCo on May 30, 1997, and all three restaurant chains became part of a new company named Tricon Global Restaurants, Inc. The company assumed the name of Yum! Brands on May 22, 2002.[9][10]
Before closing in 2015, the oldest continuously operating Pizza Hut was in Manhattan, Kansas, in a shopping and tavern district known as Aggieville near Kansas State University. The first Pizza Hut restaurant east of the Mississippi River was opened in Athens, Ohio, in 1966 by Lawrence Berberick and Gary Meyers.[11]
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. Work uniforms for employees were also refreshed.[12] 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.[13][14]
On June 25 and 27, 2019, it was reported that Pizza Hut was bringing back their logo and the red roof design that was used from 1976 until 1999.[15][16]
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.[17]
On August 18, 2020, it was announced that Pizza Hut will be closing 300 restaurants after the bankruptcy of NPC International, one of its franchise providers. A company representative stated, "We have continued to work with NPC and its lenders to optimize NPC's Pizza Hut restaurant footprint and strengthen the portfolio for the future, and today's joint agreement to close up to 300 NPC Pizza Hut restaurants is an important step toward a healthier business."[18][19]
Concept
Pizza Hut is split into several different restaurant formats: the original family-style dine-in locations; storefront delivery and carry-out locations; and hybrid locations that have carry-out, delivery, and dine-in options. Some full-size Pizza Hut locations have a lunch buffet, with "all-you-can-eat" pizza, salad, desserts, and breadsticks, and a pasta bar. Pizza Hut has other business concepts independent of the store type.
In 1975, Pizza Hut began testing concepts with Applegate's Landing.[20][21] These restaurants had exteriors that looked like Colonial Style houses and had eclectic interiors featuring a truck with a salad bar in the bed. The chain offered much of the same Italian-American fare, such as 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 fall, 1995.[22]
An upscale concept was unveiled in 2004, called "Pizza Hut Italian Bistro". At 50 U.S. locations, the Bistro is similar to a traditional Pizza Hut, except that the menu features new, Italian-themed dishes such as penne pasta, chicken pomodoro, and toasted sandwiches.[23] Instead of black, white, and red, Bistro locations feature a burgundy and tan motif.[24] In some cases, Pizza Hut has replaced a red roof location with the new concept. Pizza Hut Express locations are fast food restaurants; They 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."[25]
Curbed.com reports, "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.[26]
Many of the older locations with the red roof design have beer if not a full bar, music from a jukebox, and sometimes an arcade. In the mid-1980s, the company moved into other formats, including delivery or carryout and the fast food "Express" model.[27]
.jpg)
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 calzone with a marinara dipping sauce that comes in plain, Supremo, Meaty, and pepperoni
- The Bigfoot pizza, its largest product
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.[28]
Regional differences are seen in the products and bases.[29] The company has localized to Southeast Asia with a baked rice dish called Curry Zazzle.[30][31]
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.[32]
Pizza Hut developed a pizza for use as space food, which was delivered to the International Space Station in 2001.[33] It was vacuum-sealed and about 6 in (15 cm) in diameter to fit in the station's oven.[33] It was launched on a Soyuz and eaten by Yuri Usachov in orbit.[34]
In recent years, the chain has seen 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".[35]
In January 2019, Pizza Hut announced it had expanded beer delivery to 300 locations across the U.S., with plans to expand to 1,000 locations by the summer.[36]
In March 2019, Pizza Hut announced the return of the P'Zone after a hiatus of several years.[37]
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.[38][39] 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
No comments: