John Van Slyke
Editor’s Note: John sent this as a comment on another story, “Some Wichita Culinary History.” We thought it was too good to bury, so here you are. (Do you recall your first visit to the original Pizza Hut? Send us the story!)
Now for The Rest of the Story. I was at the Pizza Hut the second day it was open. I was walking by and smelled what turned out to be pizza. The Carney brothers were running the store. I asked what they were selling. “Pizza.”
Never heard of it. How much does it cost? Something like $2 per pie. No f*ing way. (Take the price, then multiply by 12 to get 2026 dollars = $24). When I turned to walk out, one of the brothers said, “Here, take a slice. Tell your friends at East.” Well, that was my first shot of fentanyl.
That first Pizza Hut store was the first business to succeed in the small brick building. (Photo below at left) Their parents owned the building, which was part of the Carney Market next door. Soon, they opened franchises in Norman, OK, Manhattan, and KU. They also quickly outgrew the brick building and opened another store near WU in ‘ta.
Those guys were smart businesspeople from the start. Four key issues in franchising are store location, differentiation, supplying stores, and quality control. The Pizza Hut name could be copyrighted, as could the store graphics. Location selection was easy: universities. Supplying stores was pushed down onto franchisees, who were responsible for purchasing drinks, flour, etc., locally. Differentiation was the sauce. The Carneys chose this one to be a trade secret, and supplied stores with canned sauce from ‘ta. This also solved many of the quality control issues. They solved the rest of the control issues by driving around to inspect and by using local banks as lock boxes. Quickly, they began hiring college guys to run the stores, and eventually to become franchisees. The business was all cash. No AR.
After a couple of years grooving the concept, the Carney brothers began signing up new franchisees. Pretty quickly, they had developed a very profitable business. After that, they began to focus on building the business and raking in cash. The ultimate outcome was selling the company to Pepsi (I think). Eventually, Pizza Hut became an official sponsor of the Olympic Games in Moscow. Cool. Except that Rob Lang told me that in Russian, the word “hut” means hovel. Pizza Hovel.
Fortunately, only a small fraction of the world spoke Russian at the time. No wonder. Russian is a truly wretched language, what with Cyrillic characters and all. Knowing Russian could also have gotten your ass in trouble with the John Birch Society, which another fine lad from ‘ta, Bill Koch, sponsored. – JVS
Diane Zinn, More About East High Franchisees
At least three of the early franchisees were from the East High Class of ’59 – Jamie Coulter, Bob Geist and Ward Lawrence. They all took big chances and became successful entrepreneurs. Bob ended up owning more Pizza Huts than I can remember – a huge number – and Jamie also had Lone Star Steakhouse franchises.
Other Pizza Hut stories on our website —
