May 31st,1958, the first Pizza Hut is about to open its doors. Broke, two brothers had borrowed money from their mother to get it started. It was their one chance to get out of debt.
So, success was their only option. The problem… They had never made a pizza in their life. Dan and Frank Carney’s parents owned a grocery store.
But the boys didn’t have plans to take over the family business. Instead, Dan was looking for a business opportunity with far-reaching potential. And Frank was in need of a way to pay for the rest of his education.
Surprisingly, it was an East Coast food trend that would be the answer they were both searching for. Pizza. At the time, few Americans knew about it.
Being mostly well-known in Italian communities. A friend of the family told Dan that she had read about the rise of pizza and how it would take over America. He had eaten it a few times but Frank had only tried it once before.
The brothers realized that they could make a lot of money by jumping on the trend early. There was only one problem… They were both broke. Dan and Frank had to borrow $600 from their mother to start the business.
They bought second-hand equipment and turned a small, hut-shaped bar that sat next to the family’s market into their pizza restaurant. The brothers had gotten a free sign from the Coca-Cola Company, but this meant the sign could only fit eight letters on it. And five of the letters had to be “pizza.
” Inspired by the unique shape of the building, they eventually settled on “Pizza Hut”. But, less than a month before opening, the brothers faced a huge problem. Neither of them knew how to make pizza.
So, they invited a friend over who knew how to make it. He would teach them. And just in the nick of time.
Because a mere two weeks later, the restaurant was set to open. Their starting menu offered cheese and sausage or pepperoni pizzas. A small pizza cost 95 cents, and a large was a dollar fifty.
Everything was in place for the grand opening. But disaster was around the corner. They had purchased a used oven from an Italian restaurant.
But, when they turned it on for the opening… It caught on fire! Somehow, a bird’s nest was inside one of the vents, and it burned and filled the restaurant with smoke and ashes. Dan and Frank had no choice but to delay the opening and repaint the walls.
They hurried to fix everything, and Pizza Hut opened their doors the next night. After six months of success, the brothers opened a second location and the company continued growing. Within one year of opening, there were six Pizza Hut restaurants.
But the brothers had even bigger goals. They wanted to follow a hunch Dan had and expand beyond their area. So they opened their first franchised location in Topeka, Kansas.
By 1966, Pizza Hut had one hundred and forty five locations in America. And in 1969, the first international Pizza Hut opened in Canada. But with this sudden growth, Dan and Frank began to worry.
Their competition now had their eyes on them. And, if they weren’t careful, they could lose everything. They needed a way to stand out.
The brothers turned to an architect friend to make Pizza Hut instantly recognizable. The designs were good, but his work was outside of their budget. To compromise, the brothers offered the architect one hundred dollars for every restaurant built using his new design.
He got to work, and came up with the iconic Pizza Hut red roof, which would go on to become the company logo. That same year, Pizza Hut expanded to Mexico, Germany, and Australia. And opened their 500th restaurant.
With that, Pizza Hut was the top pizza chain restaurant in America, and the undisputed worldwide leader of the pizza industry. Four years later, another big change came for Pizza Hut. The company was sold to PepsiCo for three hundred million dollars.
By that time, the chain had sales of four hundred and thirty six million dollars, and over three thousand four hundred locations. But the brothers had no idea that their success still hung in the balance. Their pizza wasn’t selling very well on the East Coast.
And they needed to do something about it. Frank came up with the recipe for the Original Pan Pizza, which would become Pizza Hut’s signature item. The new recipe made a pizza that was crispy on the outside and soft on the inside.
Eventually, the company would leave the Carney family’s hands. Though Pizza Hut had grown to become the world’s largest pizza chain, they were about to enter a Pizza War. For decades, Pizza Hut sat comfortably as the leading pizza chain in the country.
But other chains were growing and threatening Pizza Hut’s sales. Little Caesar’s attracted customers with its deals, Domino’s became known for its fast service and Papa John’s was growing in popularity. In response, Pizza Hut hired a new head of marketing to help them stay in the lead.
And they began releasing a new menu item every 6 to 8 weeks. In many cases, these innovations went on to become staples in the pizza industry and included barbeque and cheeseburger pizzas as well as veggie and meat lovers pizzas. The new products gave Pizza Hut an edge over their competition, and it climbed to fourth place in sales out of all chain restaurants.
Shortly afterwards, a signature invention would change the way people ate pizza. After studying customer surveys, Pizza Hut noticed that many people did not eat the crust. This inspired the creation of a crust stuffed with cheese.
It was so popular that the six-week trial sold out in only four weeks. Within a year, the stuffed crust pizza alone brought in over three hundred million dollars in sales. Pizza Hut enjoyed more growth and success over the next decade, expanding to 12,000 locations in 86 countries.
From then on, Pizza Hut continued to launch new menu items like hot dog stuffed pizza, as well as unheard-of combinations, such as marmite stuffed crust and flying fish roe salmon cream cheese crust. This is the story of how two brothers who had no money and knew nothing about pizza founded a pizzeria that would become the biggest pizza chain in the world.
