What went wrong with Pizza Hut?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn97vdpv13wo
Posted by jammiedodgermonster
What went wrong with Pizza Hut?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn97vdpv13wo
Posted by jammiedodgermonster
20 Comments
Successive governments have waged war on disposable income, seeing it as nothing more than a pot of money to fuel necessities, bills and tax increases. Conveniently forgetting that a huge chunk of the economy is reliant on disposable income
The same thing that’s happening to pubs and restaurants all over the country.
Rising business costs mean prices go up, quality goes down, at the same time as the customer base having gradually less and less disposable income.
High prices, low quality and ignoring consumer desires.
More competition, far more pizza chains around than there used to be. Overpriced for what it is. Pizza is not an expensive dish to make
Got so expensive to the point I feel super uncomfortable going there
Pizza hut, in-restaurant, imo is delicious. When it’s served in the pan still and it stays crispy and fresh it is one of my favorite pizza places. But it is pretty pricey so i call it a rare treat.
The takeout on the other hand is absolutely abysmal. For real some of the worst pizzas I’ve had have been pizza hut deliveries. The difference between the restaurant and the takeout is shocking.
It still costs 3 times as much as my local kebab/burger/pizza place, but is a really awful product. Usually a bland soggy mess.
They got rid of the all you could eat buffet. Never went back after that. I hear the pizza also got worse.
Eating and shopping out are in a death spiral.
Country needs to get control of energy and water to keep utilities low.
Councils need to be taking ownership of commercial properties so they can keep rents low so that the space can be occupied.
Taxes on online shopping and delivery need to be raised to support brick and mortar businesses.
Public transport needs to be improved to make casual travel easier and more convenient.
Operational hours and Sunday’s need to be dumped. Businesses should be opened 11-8 Monday-Sunday
On top of this people need to learn to be more considerate in public. Quieter, more mindful of their personal space and the rubbish they make.
Essentially not a single thing that encourages physical stores or high streets to flourish has been done.
My cities Pizza Hut is closing, it’s on a retail park plonked in the middle of an ugly car park not in the city centre with no direct bus route for 80% of the city.
Brands get lazy. They establish themselves as a household name in a particular niche – Pizza Hut for being family friendly pricing for takeaway and sit in pizza.
They get greedy. They make products worse, more expensive and hope that consumers will continue to trade off of brand loyalty and recognition. This is a short term strategy. Follow this with gradual decline then sell off assets such as buildings and land for maximum profit before the business dies.
This is late stage capitalism. People aren’t interested in running a business – they want to speed run making money.
> “A light, fresh, easy-to-digest product with a few choice toppings, not the massively greasy, heavy and overloaded pizzas of the past. That, I think, is what’s caused Pizza Hut’s downfall,” she says.
A million decent pizzas can be brought these days. Pizza Hut will wither and die to be yet another relic of the past.
Great to see a US company failing in the current political climate.
When Pizza Hut was at its peak popularity, pizza was still relatively new in the UK. Go back to the ’80s and a lot of Italian food wasn’t widely available. People just didn’t buy pesto or mozzarella cheese etc. Pizza Hut was popular because people didn’t know any better.
I think their current problem is that people simply have access to nicer pizzas, so their greasy pizzas just aren’t worth paying for.
For comparison Pizza Hut in New Zealand is entirely take away based for the past 10+ years. There standard size (think medium) is only £3!
Pizza Hut was never any good, it was just trendy and fashionable to say you were going to Pizza Hut. There will be another food trend next year that people will say ‘they can’t live without’.
Takeaways are even worse. The same Macro/Costco frozen disc of shite. The best to come out of all this is shop bought pizza is massively better than about 10 years ago.
In my 40s – it used to be a weekend family treat (loved the salad bar and orange sorbet in an orange), then as a teenager all you can eat was great for hanging out.
After that it lost its identity with competition – if you wanted a meal out – Pizza Express, Zizzis (or one of the other chains that went bust) or if you wanted a takeaway Dominos or lots of other choices. Supermarket pizzas got better for a fraction of the cost. I only order it now for nostalgia of pan pizza.
Who goes there now – not a place to hang out with friends and better options for family friendly places.
If I want some pizza delivery, I have to choose between pizza Hut and my local Italian guy who was born in Napoli. Guess whose pizza is better
Last time I went to pizza hut, my wife and I were handed a bit of card with a QR code on it instead of a menu. It took us to a website where we could order, instead of speaking to the waitress (who had, after showing us to our table, seemingly vanished).
We ordered Margherita pizza, 2 sides, a glass of pepsi and a tap water.
It came to £35.
I suspect that’s part of what went wrong with Pizza Hut.
When it stopped being a fairly cheap treat.
High prices, poor quality, crappy dates venues.
Once chains take the customers for granted it’s inevitable they won’t last.
They gave me food poisoning and I couldn’t eat there anymore after that. It was a few days before Christmas. I didn’t eat a thing. Devastating.
My partner ordered gluten free delivery from them a year or so ago and after over an hour of waiting we called and they basically said they had no gluten free so they weren’t going to deliver. They didn’t call us, they said the number they had was wrong so when they read it back and it was right, we got the refund and never went back.
They seemed to be happy settling for being the worst national pizza chain so, I’m only sad for the job losses, they deserved to die.
No real investment in technology, out dated in store decor & seated restaurant format and then the killer high prices.