Pizza Hut Makes Sure It Stays On Top…ping

Pizza Hut is pulling out all the stops to stay on top…ping.

According to Forbes, with 5,890 franchises from Indianapolis to Islamabad, Pizza Hut is the world’s largest and most awarded pizza company. It also happens to be the fourth largest fast-food chain in the world, behind McDonald’s (no.1), KFC (no.2) and Subway (no.3).

But despite the public’s ravenous appetite for its saucy slices, the 57-year-old franchise is still making major efforts to compete with its competitors.

For instance, as Metro reported this week, a number of Pizza Hut franchises in London underwent major revamps, apparently in an attempt to attract the “hipster” demographic. Some of the London-area eateries are now replete with state-of-the-art cocktail bars, with bartenders on hand to mix signature concoctions like the Hollywood and even give a lesson about the history of mixology.

Also this week, Pizza Hut announced its “All Dressed Up With Pizza To Go” event to coincide with this year’s Academy Awards. Using the hashtag #AllDressedUpWithPizzaToGo, tastefully-clad participants who tweet a picture of themselves enjoying a Pizza Hut pizza while watching the show qualify to win pizza for a year. The campaign appears to be a response to what may have been pizza’s biggest moment last year, when Ellen Degeneres ordered pizzas for the front-row Hollywood elite at the Academy Awards.

And if that weren’t enough for one week, Pizza Hut also made headlines down under with its line of original nail polishes, TIMEreports. To coincide with Valentine’s Day, the chain concocted imaginatively named nail polishes (names included “Meat Me After Midnight” and “Dough You Need Me”) upon the 30 participants who came up with the best pizza-themed poetry.

Any publicity is good publicity, as they say. And that certainly rings true for Pizza Hut these days. The chain made headlines in September for mistakenly offering free animals with the purchase of 10 pizzas. And in November of 2013, a general manager of a Pizza Hut franchise claimed he was fired for “defending thanksgiving,” the Huffington Postreports. And in 2014, Inquisitr notes, the chain suffered a number of Public Relations nightmares as well, namely over complaints about the meat on the pizzas being expired. This as well as a few other gaffs resulted in financial losses for the company – the second year in a row for the embattled enterprise. Pizza Hut lost $86 million in 2013.

But as the old saying goes, when all else fails, make nail polish.