In a battle for our hearts and stomachs, two pizza
industry juggernauts will clash! Will Little Caesars finally manage to out-pizza The Hut,
or will Pizza Hut bring about the Ides of March for Lil Caesars?
Obviously, the main staple on Pizza Hut and Little Caesars' menus is pizza. Both restaurants
offer multiple types of pizza, including prebuilt recipes and customizable pies,
each in different sizes, with different crusts, and more. But,
which restaurant goes beyond pizza to cater to those who want something else once in a while?
The Little Caesars menu includes breadsticks, cheese bread, wings,
and drinks to round out your pizza delivery. You can also add desserts like cookie dough brownies,
and the menu includes a few preset pizza combinations like Veggie,
Ultimate Supreme, and Hula Hawaiian if you don't feel like creating your own pizza.
Pizza Hut's menu is a bit more varied. It also offers wings, drinks, breadsticks, cheese sticks,
and desserts, like brownies, cinnamon sticks, and a pizza-sized chocolate chip cookie. Customers
can also add yummy pastas to their orders like the Oven-Baked Chicken Alfredo Pasta or the Oven-Baked
Veggie Pasta. French fries are another side option you won't find at Little Caesars. In addition to
having more available sides, Pizza Hut has a few extra pizzas that Little Caesars doesn't offer,
like Buffalo Chicken and Backyard BBQ Chicken. While you won't find a huge difference between
the two menus, Pizza Hut might be the better option for frequent customers
who want a little more variety to choose from. Because when it comes to variety…
"No one out-pizzas The Hut! No one, no one, no one, no one…"
Pizza toppings are the bread and butter of a good pizza restaurant. After all, the more pizza
toppings offered, the easier it is to customize a pizza you love every single time you order.
Fortunately, there is no shortage of toppings at either pizza restaurant, but Pizza Hut does
have a few more options available than Little Caesars in terms of meats, vegetables, and sauces.
When you customize a pizza with Little Caesars, you'll get the standard topping
options you'd expect from a pizza place, like pepperoni, bacon, mushrooms, green peppers,
and black olives. You can even add pineapple to your pizza if you like a more offbeat pizza.
"Oh! 'Fruit on your pizza's gnarly,' you say. Well I say, 'Try before you deny!'"
However, Lil Ceasers sauce selection is limited strictly to regular pizza sauce,
and you can't get toppings like grilled chicken, pork, or banana peppers,
which could be a complete turnoff for some pizza lovers who want the most variety
possible when it comes to toppings. Pizza Hut delivers by offering all of the above,
plus additional sauces to really make your pizza one-of-a-kind.
"Why don't you try the Buffalo sauce."
"No!"
"Okay, how 'bout premium crushed tomato?"
"One sauce." "Yeah, actually there's six."
"Marinara!"
Aside from its regular marinara sauce, you can ask for garlic Parmesan, Buffalo,
or barbecue sauce on your pizza. Or, you can always go a little
crazy and add all four to one pizza if you really want to be creative.
Changing the type of crust that the pizza sauce,
toppings, and cheese rest upon can completely change the overall flavor
of a pizza. Pizza Hut and Little Caesars each have different crust options to create
a whole new pizza experience when you want something different than your usual pie.
Little Caesars' Detroit-Style Deep Dish Pizza gives customers eight slices of their
favorite Little Caesars pizza on a deep, crispy crust, ideal for those who are more into the
flavor of pizza crust than the pizza itself. According to a Little Caesars press release,
the company was the first national pizza chain to offer this style of pizza in 2013. The chain
also offers regular and thin-crust round pies to go with its rectangular Detroit-style options.
Meanwhile, Pizza Hut no longer offers its version of a Detroit deep dish pizza, so
if your mouth is watering specifically for that, you'll want to order from Little Caesars. However,
its menu does include a few other crust options, like its Original Pan Pizza, Thin 'N Crispy,
and its super-popular Original Stuffed Crust. In 2021, Pizza Hut celebrated the 25th anniversary
of its cheese-stuffed crust, which shows just how much pizza lovers have clung to this tasty option.
What pizza chain has the better flavor between Little Caesars and Pizza Hut? Taste is subjective,
of course, so the best way for us to answer that question is to pull
data from real customers who have shared their opinions on Reddit.
Those for Little Caesars really seem to love it when it's right out of
the oven. This Reddit thread features several commenters sharing their love
for Little Caesars' pizza flavor, with the original poster saying:
"People really sleep on Little Caesar's. It's hard to beat the
taste of one of their pizzas when [it's] straight out of the oven."
Others lean on the side of Pizza Hut, like one Redditor claiming that they usually choose Pizza
Hut over other pizza places, adding that it's also the, quote, "most consistent" with its flavors.
"Your pizza is astounding. Even by the standards of the infinite."
For what it's worth, several Redditors in one thread have agreed that Little
Caesars seems to have changed its pizza recipe in recent months.
"We actually changed it with…"
"You changed it? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO…"
But the only way to find out which pizza suits
your taste buds more is to test them out for yourself.
Some people value the quality of their pizza's ingredients even more than the taste,
which is precisely why we dug into what exactly goes into each company's toppings,
dough, and other ingredients.
Pizza Hut is transparent about where it sources its ingredients so that you can
feel better prepared when you place an order. For instance, its tomatoes are California-grown
and vine-ripened, and its wheat often comes from farms and mills it's partnered with for years and
years. According to current and former Pizza Hut workers who commented on a Reddit thread,
however, the dough ships pre-made rather than being made fresh in-house.
On the other hand, Little Caesars claims on its Facebook page that its dough is made
fresh daily in its restaurants using a mixer. However, the brand doesn't release as much
information about its ingredients and sourcing methods as Pizza Hut does on its website.
Affordability is important when choosing a pizza place to order from, especially if you frequently
order for multiple people, whether it be your family, business lunches, or large events. Both
restaurants have lots of deals on new items and limited-time promotions to help you save.
Little Caesars is, perhaps, most known for its $5 pizzas, but in January 2022,
the company increased the price of a Hot-N-Ready pizza to $5.55.
Shocking, we know! But, it's not a huge jump, fortunately, and Little Caesars still has some
of the best prices around. For example, a large cheese pizza at Little Caesars is just $8.49,
but a large hand-tossed cheese pizza at Pizza Hut is $17.99. Similarly, most specialty pizzas
cost between $10-$14 at Little Caesars, but Pizza Hut pizzas are mostly between $20-$24.
You'll likely pay more for breadsticks at Pizza Hut, too. An order of five breadsticks at our
local Pizza Hut is $7.59, but an eight-piece Crazy Bread at Little Caesars is just $3.99.
"By Grabthar's hammer…what a savings."
If you're like many people, you probably sometimes order pizza purely for convenience. Pizza Hut and
Little Caesars make ordering and receiving your pizza as easy as possible, but each
company offers services the other doesn't, which could influence your choice of the best option.
After ordering from Pizza Hut, you can visit your local store to pick up your
order or opt for delivery during your store's delivery times. Pizza Hut restaurants with
delivery services have their own pizza delivery drivers that bring your pizza
right to your door. Many locations also use third-party delivery services like DoorDash
and Grubhub to fill in gaps when delivery drivers may not be available. In contrast,
Little Caesars has no in-store delivery service and has no plans to offer it. However, according
to The Spoon, it does partner with third-party delivery apps to get customers their food.
Little Caesars customers can also benefit from the company's convenient Pizza Portal pickup,
an option that Pizza Hut has yet to offer. The company started offering the portals in select
restaurants in 2018, allowing customers to pre-order and prepay for their food,
and pick up their order from the portal using a unique code.
Pizza Hut and Little Caesars each have limited-time deals to help you lower
your pizza bill, some of which are available to any customer and some that are exclusive
to mobile or online orders. For example, in select areas, Pizza Hut offers deals on meal
combinations and new menu items. The restaurant also has special deals for carryout orders.
Meanwhile, select Little Caesars restaurants have daily deals. Simply look for the Today's
Deals link on its website to find every money-saving deal you can use on the day
of your order. Unfortunately, Little Caesars doesn’t have its own loyalty program to help
regular customers earn points or cash toward future orders. However,
seeing that its regular menu items are priced so low, this may not matter that much to you.
But, if you're looking for a place that rewards you for your purchases, Pizza Hut is the better
option. Its Hut Rewards program pays two points per dollar spent at Pizza Hut, whether you order
in-store, online, or on the app. Stack your points to save for free breadsticks, wings, and pizza.
As of December 2022, there are more than 4,100 Little Caesars restaurants in the
United States and more than 6,600 Pizza Hut restaurants as of January 2023. With
so many Little Caesars and Pizza Hut locations across the country,
customer service at each individual restaurant can be hit or miss.
This becomes evident when scrolling through Reddit threads,
where customers have no desire to hide their true feelings about less-than-stellar customer
service experiences at either restaurant. For instance, one Pizza Hut customer lamented -
"I had to call back 20 times to finally get a refund. But now I'm calling them to complain
about how much I had to complain to get the original issue solved."
And an unhappy Little Caesars customer explains that getting a
hold of the restaurant for a refund has been a nearly impossible task.
"Remember, an unanswered call is no complaint at all!"
Of course, research has suggested that it's more common to share negative reviews than
positive ones, so there's no way to say definitively which pizza chain edges on
top with customer service. When it comes to the ability to contact the company to
share your thoughts, both allow for online feedback submissions through a website form.
But Pizza Hut offers a few more contact methods on its website,
such as a dedicated phone line for issues related to Hut Rewards and a general customer
service phone line. Customers can also contact Pizza Hut via its Twitter page.
Pizza Hut and Little Caesars have a lot of similarities in their flavors, menu items,
and options for toppings and premade pizza recipes, which is precisely why it's common for
people to want to compare the two restaurants. Still, based on the information we've outlined
here, one or the other will probably fit your needs and preferences more for each
criterion like crust options, delivery and pickup features, and rewards programs.
For affordability, we'd say Little Caesars wins, hands down. You may not earn points
for your orders through a rewards program like you can with Pizza Hut,
but you don't really need to because Little Caesars has relatively affordable prices,
with pizzas as low as $5.55. That's tough to beat at any pizza restaurant!
But if variety and options are your priority, then Pizza Hut takes the cake. It has more toppings,
crusts, and sauce options for you to create the pizza of your dreams. There are also a
few more pizza recipes to choose from on their menu in addition to pasta dishes,
which you can't find at Little Caesars.
Reddit is proof that pizza lovers have differing opinions and that there's no
clear winner. For instance, one Redditor says that Little Caesars wins, noting -
"Pizza Hut is way too [greasy] and fatty."
But, a commenter on another thread says Pizza Hut is their winner, adding -
"It's my favorite delivery pizza."
In the end, your choice will depend on what you value most in a pizza place.