Pizza Hut is bringing back its classic red roof logo
Over the span of its 61-year history, Pizza Hut has used at least four significant logos. When that first Pizza Hut location flung open its doors in Wichita, Kansas, in 1958, a cartoon mascot named Pizza Pete was dangling the words "Pizza" and "Hut" from his fingers like puppets.
The most familiar logo to Boomer and Gen-Xers arrived in 1967. This iconic logo incorporated the chain's distinctive architectural look, a sort of Dutch gable roof in bright red. Like IHOPs and HoJo's, Pizza Huts could be easily spotted alongside roods with that peaked, tomato-bright look.
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That logo became deeply associated with the brand, as Pizza Hut used it for more than three decades. You can see it at the top on the right. In 1999, a more stylized, painterly look was introduced, with a green dot on the "i" and a yellow slash below the name.
In 2014, the logo was updated again. For the last five years, this splashy circular logo, which resembled the swirl of sauce on an uncooked crust, has been used in the chain's modern logo. You can see this at the top on the left. It is hardly the only chain to repeatedly tweak its branding.
But now, Pizza Hut is feeling nostalgic. We can relate.
The reasoning is not purely nostalgia, however. Some of the motivation is due to dollars. In 2018, Domino's dethroned Pizza Hut as the world's largest pizza chain.
"We conducted qualitative research with more than 3,000 consumers, and one consistent piece of feedback we got was that customers still consider Pizza Hut America’s Original Pizza Company. So we decided it was time to really embrace our heritage," Pizza Hut chief brand officer Marianne Radley told Fast Company.
Now if we can only get them to bring back the Pizza Hut Electronic Baking Oven.