Pizza Hut Hoping New, Diversified Flavor Menu Can Restart Sales

The new Pizza Hut menu selections offer a variety of flavors, but can it attract more customers?

The Clarion Ledger reports that beginning November 19, the Pizza Hut chain will begin introducing new flavored sauces, crusts and drizzling to further customize their pizza. At the moment, Pizza Hut is lagging behind Domino’s, and has done so for the past five quarters now. Pizza Hut has decided to expand their sauce, topping condiments, and flavored crusts to entice customers to return to their restaurants.

The new flavors and styles are meant to entice customer, new and old, into trying their atypical new menu flavors. Starting with the crusts, Pizza Hut will maintain the Original Pan crust, along with the original stuffed, skinny, hand-tossed and three cheese stuffed. The sauces, however, will give customers some varying selections.

Along with the classic marinara sauce, Pizza Hut has created a crushed tomato sauce, a creamy garlic parmesan, a zesty honey sririacha, barbecue, and buffalo sauces.

Pizza Hut will also introduce new flavors of crust for their customers. Beginning and staying with their traditional favorite, the Hut has come up with three zesty toasted cheese crust varieties (parmesan, asiago, or cheddar), a salted pretzel style, a warm honey sriracha, a fiery red pepper, a buttery garlic blend, and two limited time offerings, Ginger Boom Boom, and Curried Away.

As if that weren’t enough, you will also be able to drizzle extra flavor on to your pizza top, with choices from balsamic vinegar, honey sriracha, barbecue, and buffalo sauces drizzled in a web-like pattern. Finally, brand new toppings will be made available to the customer, including classic meatballs, Peruvian cherry peppers, premium salami, sliced banana peppers, and fresh spinach to enhance the look and flavor of your pizza.

The question now is, will this work?

Fox News is reporting that this rework is in response to falling business numbers, much like Red Lobster and Olive Garden are currently undergoing. All three are facing customer dropoff because of more variety, exotic flavors, and higher quality food. Pizza Hut is not completely overhauling the menu, however; pizzas like the Meat Lover’s and Veggie Lover’s pizza, the most popular pizzas, will remain, and work within the new menu to attract more customers. New creations, like Buffalo State of Mind, Pretzel Piggy, and Skinny Beach should peak a great deal of interest.

A few restaurants have decided to try increasing product choices to increase customer satisfaction, much like Chipotle has done recently. This has begun an industry-wide trend of product selection optimization. Pizza Hut is set to begin this new lineup Wednesday, November 19.

[Image courtesy of the UK Times]