Everybody loves pizza, right? Or they did, anyway. Pizza joints no longer dominate the U.S. landscape like they once did, now outranked by coffee shops and Mexican restaurants. The humble pie is just a little more humble these days.
America is “falling out of love with pizza,” said The Wall Street Journal. Sales growth at pizza places has “lagged behind the broader fast-food market for years,” and industry executives are not sure that the future is going to be any brighter. The parent company of the Pieology Pizzeria chain filed for bankruptcy in December, following the April filing by Bertucci’s Brick Oven Pizza & Pasta. Pizza chains still made $31 billion in 2024, but “pizza’s dominance in American restaurant fare is declining.” The pizza industry is being “disrupted right now,” said Ravi Thanawala, the North America president at Papa John’s International.
What went wrong for pizza?
It can be difficult to innovate with such a familiar product, though there have been attempts. One problem: “No restaurant chain became the ’Chipotle of pizza,’” said Restaurant Business. About 10 years ago, a number of chains like Blaze Pizza, Pieology and Pie Five tried to bring a “fast-casual, customizable business model” to the business, using “superfast ovens” to serve up “single-serve, customizable pies.” It did not work. MOD Pizza, the largest of the chains, has “flirted with bankruptcy” and is closing locations. But it is not just the newfangled pizza places that are faltering. “Quick-service” pizza restaurants like Pizza Hut, Papa Johns and Papa Murphy’s “saw sales declines in 2024.” Bottom line: “Maybe the U.S. consumer is just sick of pizza. “
Is pizza the only food sector in trouble?
Casual restaurant chains of all stripes are “increasingly bifurcating” into a “handful of winners” and a much bigger group of losers, said NBC News. Operating costs are rising and forcing chains to “raise prices in order to maintain their profit margins,” which does not go over well with lower- and middle-class customers who face “growing financial instability amid a weakening job market.” That has created pain across the industry. The “perception of affordable fast food has gone out the window,” said Alicia Kelso, executive editor of Nation’s Restaurant News.
What next?
“On the way down, at the moment, is Pizza Hut,” said Babson College’s Thought & Action entrepreneurship blog. The iconic pizza brand has been “losing money, and many of its locations need work,” which is why owner Yum Brands — also the parent company of Taco Bell and KFC — is “exploring a sale” of the chain. Pizza Hut is “old and tired,” said Ab Igram, executive director of Babson’s Tariq Farid Franchise Institute. “Yum will focus on the brands that are doing well.”
But the weakness of big chains may be an opportunity for mom-and-pops, said PMQ Pizza. Americans will never really fall out of love with pizza, after all. “The era of the chains is over,” said Loren Padelford, chief revenue officer at Slice, “and the era of indie pizza is in full swing.”
The humble pie is getting humbler