Pizza Hut Makes Student’s Wishes Come True And Flavorful

Pizza Hut gets many requests for new pizza ideas. This feel-good story completes a school project for some kids.

Fox News is reporting that students from the Clearview Middle School in Harrison Township, New Jersey were given an assignment from teacher Anne Paoletti-Boyna. The assignment was to design a food product polling the students in their class, then pitch the idea to a real food company.

Three students, Nick Gabriele, Sean Flannery, and Allyson Sooy, came up with a pepperoni pizza with a pretzel crust stuffed with bacon, macaroni and cheese. Once their initial questioning of their peers was done, then came the letter to Pizza Hut. The result, however, was not what they expected.

First, Pizza Hut responded to the student’s pitch. “Here at Pizza Hut, we get ideas for new recipes sent to us all the time. The research and logic behind your product was definitely one that inspired us to respond, as you had clearly worked together as a team to come up with an innovative idea that Pizza Hut customers will love. Your prototype got our team of chefs in Dallas, TX thinking, and we believe this pizza has the potential to make it to the next level of customer research: a taste test.”

According to the Huffington Post, the next step was even better.

Doug Terfehr, Pizza Hut’s director of public relations, and the teacher, Mrs. Paoletti-Bayna, worked in concert to surprise the class. Under the guise of taking a math test, the class began to take the “test.” However, a few minutes into the “test”, Mrs. Paoletti-Bayne stopped the test and called the three students up to the front of the class. The letter praised the three for their idea and hard work with research. All students were then instructed to report to the Multipurpose room.

When the students got to the Multipurpose room, they were treated to Nate, Sean and Allyson’s creation. The three became the heroes of the day, for their pizza idea and for getting them out of math testing for the day. Barbie King, Pizza Hut’s head of new product development, says that Pizza Hut gets many new food ideas, but felt compelled to make this one come to life.

“This was really unique in the fact that there was a lot of teamwork involved as well as innovation. They were taking four great products and combining them into one — bacon, mac n’ cheese, pretzels and stuffed crust.” King said. “And it does taste amazing.”

[Image courtesy of Pizza Hut]