PLANO, Texas, May 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- It started at one
restaurant. In Wichita. On this
date. Exactly 58 years ago.
The Pizza Hut commitment to quality food and service goes back a
long time, and the restaurant today announced the continued
dedication to that pledge for years to come.
Pizza Hut, recognized as the pizza restaurant which serves and
delivers more pizzas than any other pizza restaurant in the world,
will remove the following from its list of ingredients:
- BHA/BHT from all meats by end of July
2016
- Artificial preservatives from cheese by end of March 2017
- Antibiotics important to human medicine from chicken for its
pizzas by end of March 2017
This comes roughly a year after Pizza Hut became the first
national pizza restaurant to remove artificial flavors and colors
from its core pizzas in May 2015.
Pizza Hut has removed 2.5 million pounds of salt from its
ingredients over the last five years.
"We believe that Pizza Hut food shouldn't only taste great, but
you should feel great about it, too," said Jeff Fox, chief brand and concept officer, Pizza
Hut. "Our enhanced and expanded commitment to superior
restaurant-quality food is the result of listening closely to our
customers, and they say that these are things that they do want in
their pizzas.
"Providing our customers with restaurant quality ingredients is
something that has been at the core of Pizza Hut since the very
first restaurant opened in Wichita
58 years ago. It's so fundamental to our superior restaurant
quality beliefs that we rarely feel the need to talk about it. That
said, 58 years later, we are extremely proud to say that we still
get our vegetables, our meats, our tomatoes, our flour, our cheese
– everything that makes a great pizza – from top suppliers around
the world. We are constantly working to lead the industry in this
area and believe it is important to let customers know exactly
where their food comes from and how it's made."
Pizza Hut has been pioneering the food and service experience in
the pizza category since its inception. How they've done it has a
lot to do with how they started – as a family. Pizza Hut has
maintained – intentionally – a family-first business approach. This
is especially true in the area of food. Pizza Hut has partnered
with some of the same family farms in Kansas to grow the wheat for its dough since
the late 1950s. Pizza Hut still harvests tomatoes to make its sauce
from some of the same fields in California's Central Valley that their
founders did more than 50 years ago. In fact, most of the cheese
used on Pizza Hut pizza today is made by the same family-run cheese
supplier that did so many decades ago.
"The decisions made by our Founders involving relationships and
partners have a lot to do with why we are still the most loved
pizza restaurant in the world," said Fox. "It comes from a
fundamental truth about Pizza Hut: We started as a restaurant and
maintain a restaurant-first mentality in everything we do. From how
pizzas are prepared, how customers are served and how the entire
experience is presented. We strongly believe in our foundation of
being a restaurant that serves people, not just pizza, and that
personal service is more important to our customers today than ever
before. That's why we are proudly making advancements in our food
commitments and our dedication to serve."
Why is this so important? Because relationships matter. Quality
matters. And service cannot be compromised. To further demonstrate
the significance of this, Pizza Hut has created a microsite
dedicated to its food story at
www.PizzaHut.com/RestaurantQuality. The site spotlights its
ingredients, heritage, innovations and more. Customers can learn
about where Pizza Hut ingredients come from and how the pizzas are
made. For example, mushrooms go from farm to Pizza Hut pizza in as
little as 48 hours, and sun-soaked tomatoes begin the process of
becoming Pizza Hut sauce within approximately four hours of being
picked from the vine.
In addition to these ingredient simplifications, Pizza Hut has
already eliminated partially hydrogenated oils (also known as
artificial trans fats) and MSG. Currently, 15 percent of the
restaurant's pizzas have just one third of the daily recommended
dietary allowance for sodium, and 20 percent of its pizzas will
meet that criteria by 2020.
The pizza restaurant does not use any fillers in any of its meat
toppings. Its Italian sausage is all natural and sourced from U.S.
farmers, and its meatballs are free of any artificial colors,
flavors or preservatives. Pizza Hut also does not add any sugar or
oil to its pizza marinara sauce, and its cheese is made from 100
percent whole milk mozzarella.
Pizza Hut announced earlier this year plans to redesign up to
700 restaurants each year, with a goal of operating 8,000
restaurants in the United States
by 2022 – that's a growth of 27 percent from the 6,400 restaurants
Pizza Hut currently operates domestically. This redesign is
intended to increase efficiency and convenience for team members
and customers.
Pizza Hut is known around the world for its long heritage of
breakthrough innovation in food and beyond, including the original
Pan® Pizza, Stuffed Crust, Cheesy Bites, Crazy Cheesy Crust, and
more. The pizza restaurant also has the world's busiest website in
the pizza category at www.pizzahut.com. Nearly 50 percent of the
pizza restaurant's orders come through digital channels, of which
60 percent are via mobile device.
For more information, visit blog.pizzahut.com or to order now,
visit www.pizzahut.com.
About Pizza Hut
Pizza Hut, a subsidiary of Yum! Brands, Inc. (NYSE: YUM),
delivers more pizza, pasta and wings than any other restaurant in
the world. The pizza restaurant began 58 years ago in Wichita, Kansas, when two brothers borrowed
$600 from their mom to start a
pizzeria.
What started out small has become the biggest pizza restaurant
in the world and today operates more than 16,000 restaurants in 100
countries serving innovative pizzas, traditional favorites like the
signature Pan Pizza, and much more. Pizza Hut also is the
proprietor of the BOOK IT!® Program, which is a long-standing
children's literacy program used in more than 630,000 classrooms
nationwide. For more information, visit www.pizzahut.com. Follow
Pizza Hut on Facebook (www.facebook.com/PizzaHut), Twitter
(www.twitter.com/pizzahut) and Instagram
(www.instagram.com/pizzahut).
*For all media inquiries, please contact Pizza Hut:
Doug Terfehr, 972-338-6992,
Doug.Terfehr@yum.com
Courtney Moscovic, 972-338-8288,
Courtney.Moscovic@yum.com
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SOURCE Pizza Hut