In 1985, the Chicago Tribune reported that Pizza Hut dished out $15 million dollars,
which is more than $36 million in today's dollars, on TV ads to market its newest invention:
the Priazzo. In Oklahoma City, the first customers to sample the pies listened to Italian opera
and were told that the invention was inspired by foods served to nobility in ancient Rome.
Meanwhile, in Council Grove, Kansas, Pizza Hut gave away a ten-speed bicycle to commemorate
the new dish. The name, "Priazzo," was another $61,000 to $110,000 expenditure in today's
dollars. It was the brainchild not of a person, but of a computer told to generate names starting
with "p" and containing a double z.
"There's one more product you need to know about: Priazzo."
The pizza chain took two years to develop the deep-dish pizza-like food, finally settling
on stuffing ingredients between a bottom and a top crust, and then smothering everything
with sauce, to produce 1 1/4 inch thick pies. If you choose to believe a wistful former
manager, the dough, which was heavy in oil and cornmeal, the sauce, which was thick and
lasagna-like, and the cheese blend, which included mozzarella and cheddar, were all
unique to the product. The Priazzo even required a special pan.
Pizza Hut, per Restaurants & Institutions, made 350 million dollars off of the Priazzo
in its first year, contributing to earning increases that hit two-year highs. It came
in three, meat-heavy varieties. There was Roma, which included Italian sausage, beef,
pork, and pepperoni; Florentine, which included ham; and Milano, which had bacon, pepperoni,
Italian sausage, beef, and pork. Pizza Hut also offered a vegetarian-friendly, cheese-and-tomato
dominated variety called the Napoli.
Anecdotally, former customers tell stories on Reddit about how the Priazzo was very popular
during Pizza Hut's all-you-can-eat lunch buffets. One redditor wrote:
"You'd have to stalk the employees [...] to even stand a chance of getting a slice."
On a Facebook group dedicated to the Priazzo, fans eulogize the dish with a fervor that
must make every single one of the chain's modern menu offerings insanely jealous. One
member on the Facebook group had this remembrance:
"We got priazzo once a month, my favorite day of the month."
Another group member wrote that the Priazzo was something of a matchmaker to her and her
husband, who ate it on their first date. A third posted a picture of a plastic pizza
cutter that Pizza Hut once gifted with the purchase of a Priazzo, proudly declaring,
"Still have it and still use it!"
Every once in a while, after a forlorn Priazzo-lover begs for its return on Twitter, Pizza Hut
promises to look into it. But the Priazzo disappeared sometime between 1991 and 1993.
As much as we loved it, it might be time to come to terms with reality.
So what exactly went wrong with the Priazzo? Well, in 1987 the Priazzo was still popular.
A comedian hired by Pizza Hut even traveled the country in a mobile home dubbed "Pizza
Hut Mobile Institute For Pizza Studies" to ask customers what their favorite menu item
was. According to the New York Times, the customers would often name the Priazzo. It
seems unlikely that people would have stopped buying the Priazzo, had they been given the
choice. They weren't. Pizza Hut simply gave up on selling it. But why?
CNBC says it's because the pie took too long to make. By the '90s, the Priazzo's 40-minute
prep-time wasn't worth it for the chain's customers. As for Pizza Hut, the expensive
equipment needed to make the Priazzo wasn't worth it either. Eat This, Not That! also
insists that the Priazzo went away because it had to be eaten with a fork and a knife
— a big no-no for pizza lovers. On Reddit, some Pizza Hut employees hint at a fourth
possible reason for the popular dish's demise — Pizza Hut's new ovens aren't powerful
enough to cook the pies efficiently.
Or maybe Pizza Hut ditched the Priazzo so that it could make space for other culinary
experiments on its menu. Take, for example, stuffed-crust pizza: a pizza that wasn't marketed
as uniquely Italian like the Priazzo was, but instead quintessentially American. Pizza
Hut even had Donald Trump and his former wife, Ivana, introduce it to the world in a 1995
advertisement in which they controversially eat the pizza's crust first.
"It's wrong, isn't it?"
"But it feels so right."
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