November 13, 2014
Pizza Hut puts radical change on the menu
It might have been safer to go with a small tweak here and there, but Pizza Hut is really looking to shake things up and so the world’s largest pizza chain has decided to throw its old menu in the dumpster and offer new options that pretty much address every type of taste there is.
Earlier this week Pizza Hut announced its menu would include:
- Ten new crust flavors, including Honey Sriracha, Salted Pretzel and Ginger Boom Boom;
- Six new sauces, including Premium Crushed Tomato and Buffalo;
- Eleven new "Explore Flavor" pizza recipes such as 7-Alarm Fire (pepperoni, sliced banana peppers, Peruvian cherry peppers, sliced jalapeno peppers and fresh green peppers on a Hand-Tossed Crust with a fiery red pepper crust flavor).
"We know that American tastes and preferences are evolving, and this new menu is designed to completely wow them," said Wiley Bates, III, Pizza Hut’s executive chef, in a statement. "While some customers will be finding ways to bring flavors to the pizzas they’ve fallen in love with, others may be trying them for the first time. And, with so many options, there’s definitely something for everyone."
Pizza Hut’s changes are not stopping at its menu. The company also unveiled a new logo and is changing its employees’ uniforms, delivery boxes and cups. The company will promote the changes in a new ad campaign called the "Flavor of Now."
Not everyone thinks Pizza Hut is on the right track with its changes.
"Pizza Hut may be doing too much too quickly," Darren Tristano, executive vice president at Technomic, told USA Today. "It would appear that the brand that has lost touch with the consumer is trying to change too much overnight."
An article on The Motley Fool site argues that instead of expanding the number of choices on its menu, Pizza Hut might be better served by simplifying its offers and offering a higher quality product, similarly to what rival Domino’s has done.
- Flavor of Now: Pizza Hut Rolls Out Biggest Brand Evolution Ever – Pizza Hut/PRNewswire
- Pizza Hut to turn brand upside down – USA Today
- Pizza Hut Throws in the Towel, Goes All in On Make-Your-Own Pies – The Motley Fool
- Pizza Hut Goes Flat With Redesigned Logo – Bloomberg Businessweek
- Pizza Hut Changing EVERYTHING About Pizza Hut! – SourceFed/YouTube
Discussion Questions
What do you like or dislike about Pizza Hut’s new approach? How likely is Pizza Hut’s new menu to succeed in reversing eight quarters of sales declines?
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On one hand I like the new menu options, in that they address Americans’ changing tastes. On the other hand, so many new options make Pizza Hut’s menu too complicated. A number of years ago Pizza Hut chose to abandon their menu and simplify, because it had become too complicated, confusing consumers and taking too much time to handle an order.
Addressing the issue of quality—Consumers will probably try items on the new menu, if they meet quality expectations they will come back. If not, a quick bump in sales could turn into a long, steady decline. The quality has to be evident in every new menu item.
If there’s no incremental cost to offering all the options, then it’s a great idea. Will it reverse eight quarters of sales declines? Only if a lack of variety was the problem to begin with—and I’m guessing it wasn’t. We can expect a trial peak in sales for a quarter or two.
It is a bold move and I like it. No matter where you travel in the U.S. or around the world, pizza is as different. Chicago differs from New York and in the South and in the West. However, Pizza Hut, like it or not, is always the same everywhere. So if we have a favorite with the new line up, you will be able to have it whereever you travel. I also like it because it gives me and a lot of people a challenge to go back to Pizza Hut just to see what is new. So it will be a great boost for a while, but the true measure will be how they are doing a year from now. I think they’ll do OK. Look, America is changing so why not our choice of food? And pizza is a main stay no matter who you are!
As with all pizza places for me, I am a willing to pay extra for quality and actually have some ample toppings to go with it. There are too many pizza places pushing the $5.99 deals, and you end up with cardboard tasteless junk my dog wouldn’t eat, but hey it’s cheap! McDonald’s is suffering from this, as their products have gotten so small inside their buns, I will not eat there period. Pizza Hut has an opportunity to produce great pizza, and we’ll see how this works out for them. I am willing to drive 50 miles to get a great pizza, and there are some places out there that know how to make a fabulous product, with lines out the door. So good luck Pizza Hut, I’ll give you another try.
Reminds me a lot of McDonald’s or Burger King trying new sandwiches, kids meals or the type of grease used on french fries. Then I see how In-N-Out Burger has long lines for its simple menu. Or my local pizza-by-the-slice place with only three kinds of pizza is busy. Fairway supermarkets in Iowa with their old-school grocery stores achieving high sales per square foot. To me, radical changes in format and menu shows desperation, that something terrible has gone wrong. In my opinion you can’t change pizza and Pizza Hut is getting beat by places that just offer simple traditional pizza.
This is a bold move by Pizza Hut. The key for their success will be turning the fresh excitement of the new menu full of colors, textures and flavors into satisfied customers that are willing to share their (positive) experiences with family and friends via social networks. The menu is so varied that boring will not be one of the brand descriptors.
If the in-restaurant execution falls short on service and quality, then newly attracted (and returning) guests will be disappointed and unlikely to give it further consideration.
Like my colleagues, I applaud the new menu options. (My mouth is watering for “7-Alarm.”) However, I do not believe the Pizza Hut problems are in the menu. They are facing several hurdles that are challenges.
The first is that Pizza Hut is often thought of in the same category as “fast food.” We are seeing what is happening to the old-line fast food purveyors. That mindset by the consumer is not going to be changed easily.
Second, as the consumer becomes more and more “health conscious,” pizza is dropped from their alternatives. (Though pizza could be a very healthy food, depending on the ingredients and toppings.)
Third is the quality. Can they present this new menu with the best quality and ingredients? Let’s face it, even though the pieces are put together in the restaurant’s kitchen, this is really cooked by a company, not in the kitchen.
32,000 Consumer Reports readers rated Pizza Hut not only among the worst pizza chains, but among the worst fast food chains overall. That is hard to turn around, even with the most creative menu in the world.
Complexity is incompatible with fast food, and while I don’t want to disparage the fine people working there, I think asking people making minimum wage (or thereabouts) to become artisan bakers is unrealistic, at least overnight.
Pizza Hut is getting the read of today’s fast-skimming, fast-changing and younger marketplace. Maybe re-spinning the brand to Pizza Hut+ would have helped. It is just that many of us need to let go of old business advice and thinking and give up—the Millennials and the Gen-Z groups are shifting into place and in five years will dominate. There is space for all of us and the old Pizza Hut menus we stole already. Refinish your garage or hobby room, add the TV and VHS player (along with DVD player) and just let the chaos continue.
We are also in an industry that experiences the first impacts of change—we are the front-line of the business world. We take the most hits, we suffer the longest from the loss of the past we loved so much and we watch tomorrow come at us faster than we want it to.
Get tough. Let Pizza Hut take some hits for us—if required.
If you don’t have what the market wants, as in more of the same, then find something they do want and will buy over and over again. Great idea Pizza Hut, I truly hope you can push forward to success through a well-planned change. If so, it will inspire many to follow with plans to create and implement something new for bigger and better businesses.
I have never been a big fan of Pizza Hut and much of that is due to their employees’ lack of enthusiasm. However, one thing I know is that fast food operates best when everything is simple. One crust, one sauce, ten toppings—low price! Complicating the process is a fool’s folly. If business was declining, did anyone determine why? I would bet that product quality, service or pricing would be a contributing factor. Why not fix what is broken? This looks a lot like a gigantic smokescreen designed to buy current management time to look for another job. As for reversing a decline, I don’t see any way, especially if no one has specifically identified the menu as having been the problem.
As long as they’ve done their research with their brand loyalists and prime prospects, this should be fine. I have consistently been surprised at how little real research is done in advance of radical change…that’s the key to success.
We always say that Product is the #1 “P” so starting with innovation on the product side is a solid strategy. And OBTW, Domino’s just did it successfully so, there’s precedence as well.
But PH has to consider all brand touch points eventually, including and especially stores. Pretty sure the stores they haven’t touched in 30 years will not be up to the product’s speed should young people (obvious target) decide to dive into one of them. Which would lead to the classic brand disconnect, like Target suffered through for years before addressing their stores. Let’s hope the next Pizza Hut “P” to be addressed is “Place.”
PS: all the community planning and zoning boards will thank them later.
This is a good move by Pizza Hut, but does have some risk from a core brand standpoint. However, the category is very saturated so it’s time one of leaders took a risk to expanded the meaning of pizza in the consumers’ mind. This expansion of category will help to get a larger share of more meals that are currently going to a variety of other competitors and alternative meal categories.
As the category stands today, pizza has become far too dependent on price as an influential differentiator and that is a no-win situation for the players.
No matter how you slice it, it’s still pizza. Pizza is pizza. I thought you meant they were going to add to their menu things like wings, sandwiches, etc. That would be nice for variety and to bring in more people/families that want more choices of the kinds of foods, not just exotic iterations of pizzas.
It is a bold move, separating Pizza Hut from the “me too” mentality. I like it; whether it will work or not remains to be seen, but I give them credit for thinking outside of the box.
With such a varied range of ingredients and topping, how can they ensure freshness of it all? I like the Subway approach, a predictable range of toppings that you can mix and match.
What I like about Pizza Hut’s new approach is their willingness to be daring and bold in a business environment which is increasingly more conservative. I hope they will be rewarded and that other companies will act similarly bold in the future.
I am concerned that their new positioning may have outpaced their consumers. If they became old-fashioned, it may have been necessary to make a statement, but if you suddenly appear upscale, you may miss a mainstream audience.