The emergence of cheap, build-your-own pizza chains like MOD Pizza and Blaze Pizza didn t help, either.
But under the wings of marketing gurus Kevin Hochman and David Graves, Pizza Hut is back in the spotlight – and beating its biggest competitor. Hochman and Graves are part of the team that revived KFC back in 2015. They are looking to the same playbook with Pizza Hut and leaning on a brand s most powerful weapon: its heritage.
By rebooting favorites like Stuffed Crust and Original Pan pizzas and adding new specialty items like Detroit-style pizza, the Plano, Texas-based chain logged its best quarter in a decade. In its latest quarter, US same-store sales grew 16% beating a 13.4% increase in Domino s quarterly metric. Same-stores sales are a key measure of a restaurant company s financial strength.