On the 15th June 1958, Kansas brothers Dan and Frank Carney founded something magical - and that magical thing was the Pizza Hut company. Amazingly both Dan and Frank were still students at Wichita State University at the time of the company's creation, and they were able to secure a location with $600 they'd borrowed from their mum. The name " Pizza Hut" was chosen simply because the sign space they had for their location could only fit about nine characters on it, so they had to think of something short and snappy.
Within six months they'd opened a second location, and by the time the company was celebrating its first birthday, they'd opened an additional four more locations on top of that. One of their earliest location managers during this time was a man by the name of Bill Parcells, a man who would go on to become an NFL coach Hall of Famer in later life. When he first discussed plans to leave the brothers attempted to persuade him to stay, but his heart just laid with football. The brothers would look back on the event in later years and say that, despite it probably being for the best he left, he would have made a great Hut manager.
That same year, the brothers decided to franchise the business, opening further locations across America and within a decade of the business' lifespan, the first red roof Pizza Huts were appearing. Around this time the Hut also had their own mascot, Pizza Pete, who would be a part of the brand up until the 70s, when he was slowly phased out. The brothers eventually sold the company to PepsiCo in 1977, who paid the brothers a whopping $320 million for the honour of running the Hut. From there, Pizza Hut begun to take the world by storm. From the 80s onwards the Hut wasn't just an American staple anymore, as sites were now popping up in the UK, Canada, Mexico, Russia, you name it - in fact to this day there are still about 100 countries proudly homing Pizza Hut locations. Blessed be.
As you can imagine, although everybody loves pizza, not everybody has the same tastes, so Pizza Hut has had to conjure up some unique menu items when dealing with their international sites in order to adhere to acquired tastes that are specific to certain countries. This has led to all kinds of weird and wonderful creations, including the CheeZeeMite pizza from New Zealand (a cheese and marmite stuff crust), The Mizza from South Korea (a pizza that replaces the crust with a rice cake), The Cornflake Crust from Kuwait, or The Meat Pie Crust pizza from Australia, to name a few.
What you may have taken away from those examples there (minus an appetite) is that Pizza Hut sure goes all in on their crusts. Well why shouldn't they? They pretty much made crusts the big shots they are today. In fact you can thank the Hut for the very inception of big, fluffy, tasty crusts, as they were the ones who introduced the iconic deep pan pizza to the world back in 1980, a whole nine years before their rival Dominoes would take it on.
They of course also created the stuffed crust pizza, which astoundingly wasn't that big a hit upon its release - in fact it was a borderline flop. Luckily however, the company was able to save the stuffed crust pizza via a weird method - they had Donald Trump and his then wife Ivana Trump appear in an advert enjoying the pizza. This advert pretty much single-handedly saved the stuffed crust from the axe and gained the company $30 million in revenue that year. This is quite possibly the only commendable thing Trump has ever done next to taking a Stone Cold Stunner from Steve Austin, and yet he never used it on any of his campaign rallies. How strange.
Trump isn't the only politician to tango with the Hut either - former First Lady Barbara Bush became the first person to order Pizza Hut to the White House in 1989 for a charity event she was hosting there, and even more incredibly, former Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev aired an international political campaign ad set in a Pizza Hut, where diners thanked him for bringing the chain to glorious Mother Russia.
Hut mania doesn't just stop at politicians and children's birthday parties either, oh no my sirs and madams. In 2016 a six hour delivery was made that took the very first pizza to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro, breaking the record for the highest altitude pizza delivery on Earth. And I say on Earth specifically, because if we're going by stone cold delivery height distance, Pizza Hut holds the record on that, too.
In 2001 Pizza Hut sent the very first pizzas into space, specifically to the crew of the International Space Station, on board a rocket which itself had a gigantic Pizza Hut logo adorning it. Years later and clearly still not over the space craze, Pizza Hut enquired into the possibility of projecting their logo onto the moon with a laser, however upon learning their logo would need to be the size of Texas in order to be visible from Earth and would therefore costs hundreds of millions of dollars, the company canned the idea...for now.
Not that the company needs the advertising, mind. In case you haven't already made the assumption based on their track records and international fame, Pizza Hut is the largest pizza chain in the world, running circles around the likes of Dominoes, Papa John's, and Little Ceaser's. This heightened fame has led them to do some pretty outlandish things in order to keep themselves in the public's eye, which I am more than happy to detail here. So in the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movie, it was Dominoes that was the turtles' pizza brand of choice, however when Pizza Hut came a'knocking with their vast wealth of pizza money, the turtles quickly jumped ship to the winning team.
The Hut would then go on to shell out a turtle-tastic $20 million in order to fund the turtles' album release and subsequent "Coming Out of My Shell" tour, meaning that yes, Pizza Hut are responsible for the music career of the Ninja Turtles. They had to make that money back somehow though, which might explain why the company opted to release their own Pizza Hut perfumes in 2012, a scent said to smell like "pizza dough and other spices", which can usually be found on eBay from $500 and beyond. Hell, they clearly have such an investment in pizza-based romances that they also offered up a $10k pizza-theme engagement package that same year, though there has been no word on how many people jumped at the offer.
Still though, even if nobody splashed out on these obscenely luxurious products, there's always another way for the company to make money - selling pizzas. To give you an idea of the amount of pizzas Pizza Hut sells, let me share with you some stats that may interest you - Pizza Hut is responsible for 3% of America's cheese production, with the company going through over 300 million pounds of the stuff annually, with 100 million pounds of that being burnt through in summer alone. Oh and that amount? That's just the USA consumption, meaning further cheese production is required for the 99 other countries waving the Pizza Hut banner. Incredible.
But don't go thinking Pizza Hut is all about the money taking, because they are also all about the money giving. In fact for 35 years now the company has ran their Book It! program, a charity that works by allowing teachers to give students reading targets, and if they meet those targets they are rewarded with free Pizza Hut vouchers. This scheme has drawn heavy criticism from people who claim the incentive of unhealthy junk food in return for reading is bad, but frankly those people need to get with the program and accept that kids are fickle and self-centred little bastards always wondering "what's in it for me?". Pizzas. Pizzas you nasty little bastards, that's what's in it. Now go finish reading Catcher in the Rye. The Hut also inadvertently saved a young woman in Florida in 2015, when he left a message on her Pizza Hut order reading "HELP! CALL 911!" after her boyfriend had taken her hostage. The staff picked up on the note and called the police to the property, and the woman was saved.
So that's it for the history of the Hut. I could have done a paragraph detailing the negative things people have to say about Pizza Hut (i.e: it is unhealthy), but frankly if you're going to the Hut and expecting a class meal of vitamins and wellness then you're an idiot and rightfully deserve your arteries to clog. What, you think this salty greasy bread covered in cheese and meaty toppings might not be as fattening as it looks? You think a place that offers a genuine never-ending supply of ice cream and toppings is part of a balanced diet and not a rare monthly treat? Get help.
I will leave on one final fact though, in 1994 Pizza Hut and Santa Cruz Operations teamed up to create Pizzanet, which was the first ever online pizza ordering service, and amazingly this site is still running today! Happy birthday, Pizza Hut. Know that we are forever indebted to your gift of good pizza.
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