Q&A: Does Pizza Hut Franchise in the UK?

Pizza Hut is a firm favourite among pizza-loving families in the UK. If you’ve got an entrepreneurial mindset and a passion for the restaurant industry you might be wondering if you can start your own Pizza Hut franchise in the UK. Let’s find out.

Pizza Hut is an American restaurant chain known for dishing up tasty pizzas and its popular lunchtime buffet, all at a great price. The Pizza Hut brand arrived in the UK in 1973, much to the delight of Italian American cuisine fans. Pizza Hut is thought to have introduced ‘deep pan’ and ‘stuffed crust’ pizzas in the UK. These are trends that are now widely adopted around the world. There are currently around 10,000 Pizza Hut employees working in more than 260 restaurants across the country (Pizza Hut). This helps feed the three million guests the brand attracts per month.

It’s clear that the pizza delivery brand is incredibly popular and has established a loyal customer base, so it has to potential to be an extremely lucrative business investment if it was to offer franchising opportunities. We now explore if starting a Pizza Hut franchise is currently possible in the UK.

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Does Pizza Hut franchise?

The great news is, yes, it does! The pizza franchise has over 60 years of experience in the restaurant industry, so candidates can be confident that their investment is a smart choice and they will be supported by a brand with a wealth of expertise. The franchise model is clearly very successful; with 75 percent of the 13,000 Pizza Hut locations dotted across the globe being operated by hardworking franchisees.

In the UK you can invest in a Pizza Hut Delivery franchise, so you can help customers get their favourite pizzas delivered straight to their doors.

Before we see a breakdown of the Pizza Hut franchise opportunity in the UK, let’s take a look at the brand’s interesting history.

History of Pizza Hut UK

• Pizza Hut was founded in 1958. It was the brainchild of brothers Dan and Drank Carney, who lived in Wichita, Kansas. It all started when their friend suggested that they opened a pizza parlour – they weren’t very common back then – so they agreed it could be a profitable business decision. They borrowed $600 from their mother and launched the business with partner John Bender.
• The business partners rented a small building in Wichita, purchased second-hand equipment, and started whipping up the doughy treats. On their opening night, they gave away free pizza to entice the community to give their new business a try.
• In 1973 the very first Pizza Hut franchise opened in Islington, UK.
• In 1980 the very indulgent Pan Pizza was introduced.
• The brand really started to take off in the UK in 1987, when it was opening an average of one restaurant a week.
• Cheese fans cried out in delight in 1995 when the stuffed crust pizza was launched in the UK.
• By 1999, there were over 400 UK restaurants serving 14,000 people.
• 2006 was the same year cheesy bites were launched and there were 697 restaurants with 154 of these being franchise stores.
• In 2008 Pizza Hut brought Godfather’s Pizza in Ireland with 28 stores.
• In 2015 Pizza Hut added cocktails to its drinks menu.

“I think the most important differentiator in the market — and it sounds boring, but it is true — continues to be this consistent operational execution day after day after day after day. That is so often where brands go wrong. They can be exciting, new, have a great proposition and look amazing, but once all the glamour of restaurant design and new openings is over you have got to get into the daily grind of how you run the right operation across 260 sites, 365 days a year. And I think, for me, that is the most important thing.” - Jens Hofma, Pizza Hut CEO UK

Starting a Pizza Hut franchise unit

Pizza Hut’s delivery division operates a franchising model and welcomes keen entrepreneurs to help expand the business.

• Becoming a Pizza Hut Delivery franchisee: You need to be experienced in retail management, and preferably have previous franchising experience in the food sector to be accepted onto this franchise programme. It’s also important that you have a strong ambition to grow the brand in the UK. Head to Pizza Hut’s UK franchising website, where you can email your application to the franchise team.
• How much you need to invest: You need to have access to funding of at least £1 million.
• What you get for your investment: In return, you’ll receive day-to-day support from acquisition managers, franchise business managers and business experts. Your royalty fees will contribute to marketing on a national and international scale – so this is one less thing to worry about.

“To create a restaurant brand that only caters to families is a bit of a trap because families are only out at particular times of the day, particular days of the week, particular weeks of the year, so if families are the only target group that you are relying on, things don’t tend to go particularly well for restaurant concepts. While we are very focused on families, we also need to make sure we are relevant for other target groups, particularly young adults,” - Jens Hofma, Pizza Hut CEO UK

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Start a Pizza Hut Delivery franchise

British people really do love the convenience and indulgence of eating pizza, so if you are attracted by the Pizza Hut franchise opportunity and meet its requirements, why not contact the franchise team for more details? We have lots of other fantastic pizza franchises in our UK franchise directory, including Caprinos Pizza, NKD Pizza, Snappy Tomato Pizza and Bella Italia. In our large bank of articles, you can also find out more about Pizza Hut CEO, Jens Hofma.