tesg's guide to big chain road food consumption

CHAIN -- Pizza Hut
Owner -- Yum! Brands (NYSE: YUM)
Primary Operating Region -- About 84 countries
Number of Locations -- 6,306 US, 4,680 International (December 2004)

A newbie in accounting at my workplace decided we needed to have a food day once a month to celebrate department birthdays because that's what they did at her former place of employment and she was sure this would cure us from being a bunch of joyless zombies.  At the most recent of these, my cube neighbor enters our hole in the wall and says "Somebody brought pizza.  I'm going over there as soon as Accounting clears out."

I went with her and said, "Nuts.  It's Pizza Hut."

"Is that a problem?" she asked.

Apparently not.  I had three slices.  It wasn't bad.  It certainly could have been worse.

Pizza Hut debuted in 1958 in Wichita, Kansas.  Dan Carney was working at the family market when the owner of the tavern next door, who wanted out, showed him an article about pizza.  Dan and brother Frank borrowed $600 from their mother, recruited somebody who actually knew how to make pizza, modified his recipes, and took over the tavern building. The name came because the brothers wanted to use "Pizza" in the name, and the existing sign on the building only had room for three more letters.  Somebody said the building looked like a hut.  History was born.

The Carney brothers opened the second store within a year.  There were five stores within two years.  The first franchise opened in Topeka.  Expansion was explosive.  Pizza Hut went public in 1969.  The 3,400-unit international chain was sold to PepsiCo in 1977 for $300 million.  Dan, who had already reduced his duties years previous, got out.  Frank stayed on until 1980.  Today, Frank is a partner of one the largest franchise groups of...Papa John's.  It was a Papa John's commercial campaign featuring Frank Carney in front of a mock Pizza Hut board announcing he'd found a better pizza that got Pizza Hut's ire up and spawned lawsuits lasting the rest of the decade over Papa John's "Better Ingredients, Better Pizza" slogan.

Pizza Hut's menu is pretty wide.  Pan Pizza. Hand-tossed. Thin n' Crispy. "The Big New Yorker".  Stuffed Crust.  There's the "Lovers" line of pizzas, the Supreme pizzas, the calzones they call "P'Zones", and the occasional specialties.  Pizza Hut locations vary from full-service dining room operations and the occasional lunch buffet, to take-out/delivery only, to express units, to combination stores with other Yum! brands, usually Taco Bell.

So what's my problem with Pizza Hut?  Basically, it's uninspired and it can be really pricey.  My last experience with Pizza Hut before the recent office food day was about a year ago in rural Nebraska.  I'd checked into a motel for the night and ordered a thin crust Pepperoni Lovers from the local Pizza Hut, the only delivery place in town.  I paid $20 including tax and driver tip for a cold, skimpily-topped pizza that took two hours to deliver. It was the smallest "large" I'd seen in some time.  I still ate the whole thing, then walked across the road to McDonald's because I was still hungry.

I've had a lot of experiences with Pizza Hut that way, and I'm fed up.  There isn't another major pizza chain I can think of that I wouldn't pick before Pizza Hut.  I even like the buffet pizza at Golden Corral better than Pizza Hut.  But I'd still eat Pizza Hut if it was put in front of me.  It's just not an inspiring enough product to seek out.

If anything on the menu is a standout, it's probably the Pan crust.  It was Pizza Hut's most successful product rollout ever, and it's still a fairly unique product in the industry.  The Personal Pan version did wonders for their lunch business.

Maybe it's a matter of taste, maybe it's just a brand name burned into people's minds.  In any case, Pizza Hut isn't going anywhere.

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