Pizza Hut

• 1. Introduction

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  Pizza Hut owes its name to a sign that could hold only eight letters. The chain began in Wichita, Kansas, in 1958, when two Wichita State University students, the brothers Dan and Frank Carney, borrowed $600 from their mother. Today the company is run from Plano, Texas, and counts 19,974 restaurants worldwide as of 2025. Yet its recent years look very different from its beginning. How does a student venture grow into a restaurant empire that spans continents? Why did a roof become as famous as anything on the menu? Where did the chain stand against its rivals at its peak, and where does it stand now?

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• 2. Wichita To Wall Street

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  Six months after the first restaurant opened, the Carneys added a second outlet, and within a year they were running six. In 1959 they began franchising, starting with a location in Topeka. By 1963 the chain counted 24 locations.

  Bill Parcells worked for the company while he was a college football player at Wichita State. He considered taking a franchise as a career, with law school as another option. He chose coaching instead, became a head coach in the National Football League, and was later inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

  By 1966 the company had 140 locations and a headquarters in Wichita. That same year Lawrence Berberick and Gary Meyers opened the first Pizza Hut east of the Mississippi River, in Athens, Ohio. The Carneys took the company public in 1969, and by the end of that decade it had over 300 locations.

  By 1971 Pizza Hut had more locations and higher sales than any competitor. Early in the decade it launched four other chains to widen its menu. Taco Kid sold fast-food Mexican dishes, Next Door sold hamburgers, Flaming Steer was a steakhouse, and Sutphen's served barbecue. All four failed and had closed by the end of the 1970s.

  PepsiCo acquired Pizza Hut in November 1977, when it had over 4,000 locations. On the 30th of May 1997, PepsiCo spun the chain off, along with Taco Bell and Kentucky Fried Chicken, into a new company named Tricon Global Restaurants, Inc. That company took the name Yum! Brands on the 22nd of May 2002, and it owns Pizza Hut today. What Yum! inherited included a building style that customers could spot from the road.

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• 3. The Red Roof

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  The red roof arrived in 1969 as part of the store building design, and the company later folded it into its logo. Accounts differ on who drew it. Some sources credit the Chicago architect George Lindstrom, in 1963. Others credit Richard D. Burke, a Wichita architect and college friend of the Carneys, who was paid $100 for each store built to his design.

  Pizza Pete, a stereotypical Italian chef, was the company's first mascot. Roadside signs showed his face until a graphical red roof replaced him. Some people see a wide-brimmed red hat in that emblem, especially in German-speaking countries, where the word Hut means hat.

  In his book Orange Roofs, Golden Arches, Phillip Langdon called the design "something of a strange object." He noted that architectural journals ignored these buildings, even though they had become some of the most numerous and conspicuous in the United States. Curbed.com reported in 2014 that 6,304 traditional units were still standing as of 2004, with shingled roofs and trapezoidal windows.

  The style was common in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and the name "red roof" is now somewhat anachronistic because many locations have brown roofs. Many of the older sites serve beer or have a full bar, a jukebox and sometimes an arcade. In the mid-1980s the company moved into delivery, carryout and the fast-food Express model.

  On the 25th of June 2019, Pizza Hut announced it was bringing back the logo and red roof design used from 1976 until 1999. Since 2019, various locations have been remodeled into Pizza Hut Classic formats, with interiors that echo the 1980s and 1990s. A 2024 documentary by Matthew Salleh, Slice of Life: The American Dream. In Former Pizza Huts, follows people who have turned old Pizza Hut buildings into new enterprises.

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• 4. Crusts And Experiments

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  The stuffed crust pizza went on sale on the 26th of March 1995, and by the end of that year it was one of the chain's most popular lines. Its outer edge wraps around a cylinder of mozzarella. A 2021 menu addition, called "nothing but the stuffed crust," was a ring of dough filled with cheese.

  Thin 'N Crispy was Pizza Hut's original style, and the North American menu has also featured pan pizza with a crispy edge and a hand-tossed crust. Dippin' Strips cut a pizza into small strips for dipping in sauces. The P'Zone was a pizza-calzone hybrid with marinara sauce, and it returned in March 2019 after several years away. The Bigfoot was the largest product, and the Priazzo was a pie stuffed with pizza ingredients.

  Regional menus went in other directions. In Southeast Asia the company sold Curry Zazzle, a baked rice dish. On the 9th of May 2008 it launched The Natural, made with natural ingredients, in Seattle, Denver and Dallas. The Dallas market dropped it on the 27th of October 2009.

  In 2001 Pizza Hut developed a pizza for the International Space Station. It was vacuum-sealed and about 6 inches (15 cm) across so it would fit the station's oven. A Soyuz launched it, and Yuri Usachov ate it in orbit. In March 2020 Pizza Hut Hong Kong partnered with IKEA on a side table called SÄVA, designed to resemble a pizza saver and shipped in a pizza-box package.

  The company tested whole new restaurant formats too. In 1975 it began testing Applegate's Landing, with Colonial-style exteriors and a truck holding a salad bar in its bed. Nearly all of those restaurants were gone by the mid-1980s, and the last one, in McPherson, Kansas, closed in late 1995.

  The Pizza Hut Italian Bistro, unveiled in 2004, reached 50 US locations. It added penne pasta, chicken pomodoro and toasted sandwiches, and it swapped black, white and red for burgundy and tan. Express locations offer a limited menu and are often paired with WingStreet or with siblings such as KFC and Taco Bell.

  Yum! launched the WingStreet chicken wing menu in 2003 alongside existing Pizza Hut franchises and predicted more than 4,000 locations by 2010. A standalone pilot store opened in Denton, Texas, in 2012 and closed the following year. In 2015 the company planned cocktail bars in its London branches as part of a £60 million bid to win back what it called "the Nando's generation."

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• 5. Around The World

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  Beijing got the first Pizza Hut in China in 1990. There the company used an altered model, with a fine-dining atmosphere, knives and forks, and an expanded menu suited to Chinese tastes. It had 160 restaurants in 40 Chinese cities in 2005 and 1,903 restaurants in 2015. By June 2023 there were 3,000, and by the end of September 2025 it had over 4,000 outlets in over 1,000 cities. The authors Savio S. Chan and Michael Zakkour wrote that middle-class Chinese see Pizza Hut as "akin to fine dining." China's operations now sit inside the Yum China spinoff.

  Boris Yeltsin called for Pizza Hut deliveries in 1991, as food supplies dwindled during the Soviet coup attempt. That was the year the chain began operating in Russia. It suspended operations after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, and some restaurants later reopened under a new trademark, PittsaN. Pizza Hut was also one of the first American franchises to open in Iraq.

  Garry Melville-Smith, a businessman who bought the franchise rights for New Zealand, opened the first store there in New Lynn in 1974. By 1990 there were 36 stores, and at its peak the chain held 75% of the New Zealand fast food market. That success drew in Domino's, Eagle Boys, Pizza Haven and Hell Pizza. Melville-Smith sold the franchise back to PepsiCo in 1996. In 1998 the chain shifted toward takeaway and delivery. The original New Lynn restaurant was demolished in February 2016, and in late September 2024 the country marked 50 years of Pizza Hut with pop-up buffet events in Auckland.

  In April 1970, a Belfield restaurant became Pizza Hut's first dine-in site in Australia. In September 2016 the private equity firm Allegro Funds and a local management team bought the master franchise from Yum! Brands. Two months later the chain acquired the rival Eagle Boys, and half of its stores were converted by Christmas 2016. Flynn Restaurant Group bought the business in June 2023, when it had about 260 stores. In May 2024 the franchisee Pizza Pan Group was fined AU$2.5 million for sending 10 million spam messages over four months.

  Pizza Hut first opened in the United Kingdom in 1973. In October 2025 the UK business entered administration, with plans to close 68 restaurants and a loss of 1,277 jobs. Yum! III (UK) Limited was to acquire the 64 remaining restaurants in a prepackaged deal.

  Elsewhere the picture is mixed. The first Karachi outlet opened in 1993, and Pakistan now has a presence in 23 major cities. South Korea had 324 franchises by August 2018, the first having opened in 1985. Pizza Hut officially opened in Ethiopia in 2018. Argentina saw the chain arrive in 1983, withdraw, return in the mid-1990s and withdraw again in 1998. Panama lost it in 2022 after reported losses. In Chile, a franchise concern called Food Delivery Brands, which also handled Telepizza, went bankrupt in 2025.

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• 6. Selling The Hut

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  "Putt-Putt to the Pizza Hut," produced in 1965 by Bob Walterscheidt for the Harry Crow agency in Wichita, was the chain's first television commercial. Shot like an old movie in fast motion, it follows a man in a suit, played by Ron Williams of the Wichita station KAKE-TV, as he drives his 1965 Mustang JR to pick up takeout. Townspeople chase him, and by the time he gets home others have eaten all the pizza. It first aired on the 19th of November 1966 during halftime of the Notre Dame versus Michigan State "Game of the Century." Sales rose dramatically, and the ad ran for eight years and earned a Clio Award nomination.

  In 1989 the company sponsored Back to the Future Part II, offering free futuristic sunglasses called "Solar Shades" with a purchase. A futuristic Pizza Hut logo also appeared on a dehydrated pizza wrapper in the McFly family dinner scene. In 1990 it reportedly spent $20 million to sponsor the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Coming Out of Their Shells live musical. The 1990 NES game Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game came with a coupon for a free pizza, and pizza in the game refilled the character's life.

  In the early 1990s the company set out to attract children and pre-teens to its dine-in business. With the comedy writer Walter Williams and the San Francisco agency Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, it created The Pizza Head Show. The commercials starred Pizza Head and his pizza-cutter nemesis Steve, and they were meant to say that Pizza Hut meant "weird fun."

  Celebrities became a habit in 1995. Donald Trump and his first wife Ivana appeared in an ad that played on their recent divorce, with Donald telling her, "Actually, you're only entitled to half." Ringo Starr teased a Beatles reunion in another spot, but it featured three members of the Monkees. In Britain the following year, Damon Hill and Murray Walker pitched the stuffed crust, and Jonathan Ross said "stuffed cwust" because of his rhotacism.

  Another British ad poked fun at Euro '96, when England lost to Germany on penalties. Gareth Southgate wore a paper bag over his head while Stuart Pearce and Chris Waddle mocked his missed penalty. At the end Pearce said, "this time he's hit the post."

  In 1998 Mikhail Gorbachev starred in a Pizza Hut commercial with his granddaughter Anastasia Virganskaya, raising money for the Perestroyka Archives. The production put cameras on the Kremlin and shut down Red Square for the establishing shots. Two years later the company paid to put its logo on a Russian Proton rocket that launched the Zvezda module.

  On the 1st of April 2008, Pizza Hut emailed American customers claiming it had changed its name to Pasta Hut. The company's Dallas headquarters changed its exterior logo, and the first ad showed the original restaurant being imploded. Ten London locations took on Pasta Hut signs that October. The UK chief executive insisted it was only a "PR exercise."

  In August 1994 Pizza Hut and the Santa Cruz Operation announced a pilot in the Santa Cruz area. Customers could order delivery from a local restaurant over the Internet, connecting to a central server in Wichita through software called PizzaNet. A 2023 promotion for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem film brought delivery to designated spots in the New York City subway.

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• 7. Pizzas For Pages

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  Book It! began in January 1985, and it was conceived in 1984 at a dinner between Pizza Hut president Art Gunther and Bud Gates, senior vice president of marketing. Gunther wanted a way to help his son read more. A teacher sets a reading goal for each month from October through March. Students who meet it earn a certificate for a free one-topping Personal Pan Pizza, and the classroom that reads the most wins a pizza party.

  A 1987 report estimated that participating children raised their reading from three books to nine books per month on average. The program's success spurred local libraries to create their own summer reading programs. It marked its 25th anniversary in 2010, while the Australian version ceased in 2002.

  Some psychologists criticized the program for risking overjustification, which could reduce children's intrinsic interest in reading. In 2007 the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood called it "one of corporate America's most insidious school-based brand promotions." Its pamphlet argued that Book It! promoted junk food to a captive market and made teachers into promoters for Pizza Hut. A study of the program found it neither increased nor decreased reading motivation.

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• 8. Troubled Years

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  In October 2007 the UK group Consensus Action on Salt and Health criticized Pizza Hut because some items contained more than double the recommended daily amount of salt for adults. A company spokesperson said the surveyed pizzas were not part of family meal deals and that salt reduction had been under way since 2004. Between 2008 and 2010 the company removed over 15% of the salt across its menu.

  Delivery drivers filed a class-action lawsuit in July 2014. They alleged that unreimbursed car expenses pushed their net wages below the minimum wage, violating the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. An attempt to dismiss the case failed in November 2015, and in December 2016 the case, Linkovich v. Capital Pizza Huts, Inc., ended in arbitration with damages paid.

  A 2018 World Animal Protection assessment claimed Pizza Hut showed "limited evidence" of concern for humane handling of livestock. In 2021 Yum! Brands pledged cage-free eggs in the majority of locations by 2026 and in all locations globally by 2030.

  The largest Canadian franchisee, Priszm, went into bankruptcy protection on the 31st of March 2011. In 2015 the oldest continuously operating Pizza Hut closed, in the Aggieville District of Manhattan, Kansas. It had opened in 1960 as the eighth location. A rebrand beginning on the 19th of November 2014 aimed to reverse two years of falling sales, adding crust flavors, 11 new specialty pizzas and redesigned uniforms.

  Richtopia listed the brand at number 24 among 200 Most Influential Brands in the World in 2017. By 2018, however, Domino's had passed Pizza Hut as the biggest chain in the United States. On the 7th of August 2019 the company said it would close about 500 of its 7,496 US dine-in restaurants by the middle of 2021.

  On the 18th of August 2020, Pizza Hut said it would close up to 300 restaurants after the bankruptcy of NPC International, one of its largest franchisees. Flynn Restaurant Group bought NPC's 937 Pizza Hut locations in March 2021. In 2025 Yum Brands closed 130 locations and announced a strategic review, citing continuing low sales. In February 2026 another 250 closures were announced for the first half of the year. In April 2026 it was reported that Yum was looking to sell the chain to private equity.

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