The great wheel of cheese continues to turn, and today it has crushed the last remaining dignity of a once-mighty empire. Pizza Hut, the international purveyor of what can charitably be called ‘food,’ has been sold for $2.7bn to a consortium of investors who presumably have never tasted their own product. This, as British fast-food chains circle the newly orphaned franchise like seagulls over a discarded chip buttie.
Let us pause to reflect on the sheer absurdity of a transaction wherein a company that has been systematically ruining Italian cuisine since 1958 is still valued at nearly three billion dollars. That is roughly the GDP of Barbados, or the amount you would need to buy every single stuffed crust pizza ever made and turn them into a habitable moon. But no, it is real money, changing hands for the privilege of owning a chain whose signature innovation was to fill the outer ring with molten processed cheese. We live in an age of miracles.
The British rivals in question — we all know them, we fear them — include the likes of Papa John’s, who have been attempting to rebrand as a premium option by using a slightly less synthetic cheese, and Domino’s, who deliver with a speed that suggests they have discovered a wormhole between the kitchen and your sofa. These corporate predators are now sharpening their claws, or perhaps their bespoke pizza cutters, in anticipation of a bidding war. One can only imagine the boardroom discussions: ‘We must acquire Pizza Hut if we are to corner the market on bland, medium-sized pan pizzas served with a side of existential regret.’
Meanwhile, the public at large is expected to react with the same weary indifference that accompanied the last dozen such acquisitions. The average Briton, after all, has long since accepted that Pizza Hut is a place you go to when you have failed to plan any other meal and the pub is closed. It is the culinary equivalent of a bus shelter: functional, depressing, and smelling faintly of damp cardboard.
Let us not forget the tragicomic saga of the Hut’s recent history. Once a beacon of plastic-tablecloth cheer, it has been outmanoeuvred by delivery apps, undercut by supermarket freezer aisles, and abandoned by any chef who ever looked at a basil leaf. The sale marks a final surrender, a white flag waved from a greasy napkin. The new owners promise a ‘revitalisation strategy,’ which in corporate jargon means they will slash costs, close branches, and introduce a new line of ‘artisan’ pizzas that taste exactly the same but cost three pounds more.
And so the wheel turns. Pizza Hut is sold, the British rivals circle, and somewhere a franchisee is weeping into a bucket of blue cheese dip. The only winners here are the investment bankers, who will pocket their fees and move on to the next carcass. As for the rest of us, we are left to contemplate a world where $2.7bn can be spent on something that is, at heart, a delivery mechanism for grease and regret. But then again, that is the free market: a vast, absurd canteen where the rich get richer and the rest of us eat the crusts.
