Pizza Hut Adds 25% More Cheese to Pan Pizzas

Pizza Hut is adding 25% more cheese to it pan pizzas, which in turn will require 150 million more pounds of milk to produce that extra cheese. The new pizzas are now available in Pizza Hut’s 6,000 restaurants across America.

The announcement was made by Dairy Management, Inc. (DMI), which helped Pizza Hut develop recipes that made baking the pizzas with the added cheese possible. One of the challenges was to bake the pizzas consistently, since Pizza Hut restaurants use several types of ovens.

It was critical each pizza would have uniform melt, stretch and color characteristics, says Nitin Joshi, a DMI employee who works with Pizza Hut in its headquarters in Plano, Tex. Pizza Hut made about 8,500 test pizzas before a finished recipe and product were settled on. The company then held training sessions across the country with its franchise operators to ensure they knew how to make and bake the new creations.

“This is another great example of the power of a partner working with our checkoff team to give consumers a product they truly desire,” says Marilyn Hershey, Pennsylvania dairy farmer and chairman of DMI, which manages the national dairy checkoff. “It’s also a win for farmers as we continue to explore new and innovative avenues for our milk production through our partnerships.”