Yeah, I saw a lot of folks grousing on Reddit about this, but 350 miles is less than an hour in the air, right? I didn’t see the details, I hope if you ring the FA and ask for a cup of water they’d give you one. Otherwise, I think we can all survive an hour without pretzels.
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There’s a podcast about this on 99% Invisible.
It’s a great podcast about things all around us that we hardly ever pay attention to.
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Listened to two episodes of this, subscribed!
Wow, pay to see shit posted by others? Sign me up!!
I thought this was a very good episode of Black Mirror (on Netflix) to show where we might end up with subscription/ensh!ttification.
They used to be such a nice chain back in the 90s.
Then Private Equity got a hold of them and it just went downhill after that.
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They tried everything except making better pizza.
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Probably nostalgia driving a lot of this for me, but it feels like it really has gone downhill. I have fond memories of the buffet (sunflower seeds on your salad ftw). And the deep dish crust used to be really, really great.
I don’t eat at chain pizza places much anymore but I think Domino’s is probably my favorite, Papa John’s second, then the Hut, Little Caesar’s has always sucked but it’s like $5.99 for a large. Cici’s is in the same ballpark I think, there isn’t one here so I haven’t been to Cici’s in like 7 years.
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This is me. I do not have any favorite chain-store pizza corporations.
I can starve for an additional hour or so.
We used to have this great place for Detroit-Style, but it closed due to greedy property owners.
I sometimes get pizza at my local breweries. Very good.
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My nearest brewery makes a really good pizza, not the best in town but well above average. My neighbor and I went last week and got a BBQ chicken pizza that hit the spot after doing yard work all morning!
I have no clue about that. I think Pizza Hut disappeared from my corner of the world 15-ish years ago.
The only national chain pizza I’m aware of surviving around here is Dominos. With as many excellent/good local (or local chain) pizza places as we have around here, there’s only enough demand to support one chain of cheap but mediocre delivery stuff.
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Mismanagement of franchises by the corporation, not the franchisees, is my guess. The franchisees dump them off to someone stupider than they, or just fold and learn a hard lesson.
They all seem to have cut back on cheese over the years. IIRC, the place i worked in HS put on 10oz for a 14". I’ll put on a similar amount when i make them at home. This gets nice coverage all the way out to the crust. Nowadays it seems like most pizzas are well short of this.
Other things we did there 25 years ago that I know have changed - there was a shift to pre- made dough and pre shredded cheese. We did all that on site each night to prep for the next day. I worked at a regional chain but i suspect similar trends happened across the industry. Their pizza definitely suffered.
Now, almost all pizza comes out of my oven. Dough is easy enough to make and 450-475 is plenty hot to cook a pizza in 7-8 minutes (on a pre heated stone).
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Anecdotally, I feel like the first really hit Pizza Hut, and maybe everyone. The deep dish dough used to be pretty fantastic, now it’s just okay.
I guess it’s fine, we have several local places that do it the right way with fresh dough and high-end mozzarella, etc. And one local place that is super cheap and at least as good as Pizza Hut, I hit that one occasionally.
Admittedly, diet trends could be part of all of this - like when they are required to publish calorie counts and people suddenly want a 300 calorie slice of pizza rather than a 500 calorie slice of pizza, they are going to cut out some cheese and stop deep-frying the crust in half a cup of oil.
But what’s great is making your own dough, tossing that in a cake pan with that oil, and overtopping it with cheese to get that fried bread and cheese crust.
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We were actively shopping for Detroit-Style pizza pans the other day.
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