A Stroll Down Personal Pan Pizza Lane
By Kate Oczypok
The story below by Kate Oczypok is about a food corporation getting its greasy fingers into the school system, but it doesn’t offend me. However, the fact that Lunchables are now being offered as the official school lunch to millions of U.S. students really makes me wild with rage. I suppose the difference is that “read some books, have a treat,” is a different message than “here’s your box of sodium, it’s this or nothing.”
The Washington Post recently published an article about tobacco companies’ ownership of food companies in the 1980s, which is when Lunchables were being developed, and how many executives and employees considered themselves to be in the “flavor” industry, not the food industry. The best scientific minds of every generation work for food conglomerates, making sure everything that comes in a box or a bag is “hyperpalatable.”
And now it seems some food companies are looking into tweaking their offerings in the face of Ozempic, which seems to change many users’ appetites. Truly, we have very little control over what we eat, but at least knowing that gives us some power. —Katherine
A Stroll Down Personal Pan Pizza Lane
by Kate Oczypok
What comes into your mind when you hear the words “personal pan pizza?” If you were born in the U.S. between 1980 and 1995, chances are you remember visiting a Pizza Hut after reading a certain number of books in elementary school.
Since 1984, the Pizza Hut BOOK IT! Program has encouraged kids to read, by dangling a free, one-topping personal pan pizza in metaphorical front of them. And so began a generation’s love affair with personal pizzas. It took Pizza Hut 25 years to figure it out a winning gimmick.
In 1958, brothers Dan and Frank Carney borrowed $600 from their mother to open a pizza joint in Wichita, Kansas. They rented a 600-square-foot building that was small enough for Dan’s wife to think of the name “Pizza Hut.” They bought used equipment and offered free pizza on opening night.
By 1969, the red roof we know and love was adopted for all Pizza Huts. Two years later, the chain became the number-one pizza restaurant chain in the world, in both sales and number of restaurants. In 1980, personal pan pizza was introduced in all restaurants.
In 1984, when Pizza Hut paired itself with BOOK IT!, 200,000 elementary school students enrolled in the program, which is designed for Pre-K through sixth graders (or ages 4 to 12).
“The nearest Pizza Hut was across the river in Rochester, and it was a treat to go when I completed my BOOK IT! awards,” says Keith Shovlin, who was born in the early 1980s.
Keith’s class made a giant cardboard pizza and each student had a “slice” to write their words of thanks to the restaurant. He remembers writing about how much he liked its pizza compared to Little Caesars and Domino’s.
(Pizza Hut’s buffet is also a Millennial trigger. Keith remembers working out just how much to eat to get his money’s worth there. “For me, it was five pieces, one salad with shredded carrots and pineapple and two drinks.”
Not only did Pizza Hut draw a generation in with reading incentives, it also was one of the first fast food chains to capitalize on movie promotions. In 1989, the chain sold “solar shades” to promote “Back to the Future Part II.”
Whitney Ennis, who was also born in the early ‘80s, loved the BOOK IT! Program and vividly remembers getting solar shades from Pizza Hut when she was in third grade. “My best friend and I thought we were so cool in our neon pink and yellow glasses,” she says.
In 1994, Pizza Hut became the first national chain to offer pizza delivery via the internet. The next year, stuffed crust pizza was born; Pizza Hut soon broke sales records. In 2001, as Millennials began to get older, Pizza Hut was the first company to deliver pizza to space.
Pizza Hut pizzas may not be the most gourmet, or even the best tasting, but those six-inch personal pan pizzas with their melty cheese, salty pepperoni and crispy-yet-chewy crust really can give you a million sense memories.
While the restaurants have not disappeared completely like Blockbuster or other chains of the ‘80s and ‘90s, many Pizza Huts have closed in recent years. It still runs the BOOK IT! promotion.
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Checking in on the chocolate industry, a group called International Rights Advocates has filed a lawsuit in the U.S. Court of International Trade to block cocoa imported from West Africa. As the article reminds us, “The major chocolate companies had pledged to end their reliance on child labor to harvest their cocoa by 2005. Now they say they will eliminate the worst forms of child labor in their supply chains by 2025.” The “worst forms.” They’re all demons. The lawsuit references the Tariff Act of 1930.
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Anyone else remember getting a Pizza Hut button each year, and getting a little sticker to add to it for each pizza you earned? I think I loved filling up my button with stickers even more than the pizza.
I was born in the late ‘70s but I also have fond memories of BookIt! I was always so excited to go get that personal pan pizza that I earned.