Free Republic

Better Ingredients. Better Pizza. More NFL Anthem Protests. Less Sales. That was the message Papa John’s CEO John Schnatter sent on Wednesday. “The NFL has hurt us,” Schnatter said during a conference call, according to ESPN. “We are disappointed the NFL and its leadership did not resolve this.” The CEO, who famously stars in the company’s commercials alongside NFL legends like Peyton Manning, also said he thought the national anthem issues had been “nipped in the bud” last season

In the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston back in 2015, the people at the nonprofit organization Haley House came up with a novel idea. They would open a pizza shop based on the principles of economic justice and fair wages to support the community. Named Dudley Dough, the shop would pay wages far above the minimum which many people in that industry earn, with added incentives for training and community development. It was an inspiring idea. Unfortunately for them, only two years later the place is closing down. It turns out that operating a for-profit business on the principles of a...

Launched in 2015, the fair-wage pizza shop will close at the end of the year, according to Bing Broderick, executive director for the nonprofit Haley House, which oversees the shop. While popular, the shop is not breaking even financially, which has put stress on the wider nonprofit organization. “I don’t think anyone is looking at it as a failure,” said Luther Pinckney, a team leader at Dudley Dough, which is in the Bruce C. Bolling Municipal Building. “It’s an experiment, and some very good things came out of that, such as skill-building for staff and being in this building at...

Papa Johns told the NFL their sales are down this year during NFL games. This must be very concerning to the pizza chain and to the NFL. Social Justice Protests continued this week at several NFL games

Robots take on pizza Robots take on pizza at Silicon Valley startup 4:04 PM ET Tue, 14 March 2017 | 01:25 Zume Pizza, a tech start-up that uses robots to make pizza, has raised nearly $50 million. The Mountain View, California, company has raised about $48 million, just $2 million shy of its $50 million goal, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Last December, it raised $23 million at a $50 million post-money valuation from a round of series A funding, according to Pitchbook. Zume Pizza employs a mix of robots and humans to create and...

Pizza Rat is back, and he’s hungry New York’s unofficial mascot Pizza Rat has returned. The pie-loving rat that stole New Yorkers’ hearts and even inspired a Halloween costume just keeps popping up on subways and streets, and this time he’s bringing it back to his roots with a subway slice fight. Watch above as Pizza Rat battles multiple hungry enemies to protect his dinner. No one puts Pizza Rat in a corner.

As a New Yorker, I am picky and personal about my pizza. I like a thin crust, fresh tomato sauce that's not too sweet and whenever possible, fresh basil on the mozzarella. So it was with some reticence (and mild horror) that I found myself picking up a slice of pizza in downtown Manhattan recently that was slathered with truffles, foie gras and caviar. Oh and lots of gold.

Pumpkin spice cereals, pumpkin spice ice cream, pumpkin spice coffee, pumpkin spice creamer, pumpkin spice yogurt. There is seemingly no end to the pumpkin spice food onslaught this time of year. Some foods, fortunately, have remained untouched. Like pizza. Oh no, they didn't. New Jersey-based Villa Italian Kitchen is debuting its Pumpkin Spice Pizza Friday, Sept. 22, the first day of fall. The chain is calling it "the first ever pumpkin spice pizza.'' Let me be the first to say it: Forget all those hurricanes and earthquakes bedeviling the globe; this is a sure sign of the apocalypse. It's bad...

Summary via videos of some prior reporting and perhaps more recent info from inspector general of the State Dept.

When Shayda Habib heard that people near her Sugar Land, Texas Pizza Hut were stranded in their homes and running low on food, she knew what she should do

No ring of the doorbell, just a text. No tip for the driver? No problem in this test, where Domino's and Ford are teaming up to see if customers will warm to the idea of pizza delivered by driverless cars. Starting Wednesday, some pizzas in Domino's hometown of Ann Arbor will arrive in a Ford Fusion outfitted with radars and a camera that is used for autonomous testing. A Ford engineer will be at the wheel, but the front windows have been blacked out so customers won't interact with the driver. Instead, people will have to come out of their...

BURLINGTON — Ryan Roy, an employee at Uno Pizzeria and Grill in South Burlington was fired after participating in white supremacist rallies in Charlottesville, Virginia, that turned violent last weekend. Social media users identified Roy as a participant after he appeared in a Vice News report on the events in Charlottesville. Roy is seen carrying a torch and chanting white supremacist slogans in the video. Roy’s involvement in the rallies and employment status at the local restaurant was first reported by the Burlington Free Press. Skip Weldon, the Boston-based restaurant’s chief marketing officer, confirmed to multiple media outlets on Wednesday...

Traffic was stalled for hours Wednesday afternoon after a tractor-trailer crash spilled hundreds of pizzas all over an Arkansas interstate. The crash happened around 1 p.m. on Interstate 430 when a tractor-trailer carrying Tombstone frozen pizzas hit an overpass, ripping open the side of the trailer and spilling them all over the interstate. "There's a lot of frozen pizzas laying out on the interstate right now,"

It’s already the meal you turn to when you’re looking to expend as little effort as possible, and now pizza chains across the U.S. — and the U.K. — are looking to simplify the process to purchase a pie. The latest innovation comes from Little Caesars, which on Monday introduced its new Reserve-N-Ready service. The key to the service is a device known as the Pizza Portal, which is being heralded as the first heated, self-service mobile order pickup station in the fast-food industry. So what does this mean for you? In essence, you can now get your pizza without...

[snip] It may come as an unpleasant surprise to the party's supporters, then, to learn that the Democrats' rumored message for the 2018 midterms is the following: "A Better Deal: Better Skills, Better Jobs, Better Wages." Sweet fancy Moses. That's basically the Papa John's Pizza slogan ("Better ingredients. Better pizza. Papa John's"), but in reverse.

Pizza Hut plans to hire 14,000 full- and part-time delivery drivers by the end of the year, the Texas-based chain announced Tuesday. That amounts to nearly 3,000 hires a month. The chain also announced a new delivery algorithm that “will account for variable factors such as weather, construction, traffic and other irregularities in the delivery pattern to enable safe, accurate deliveries,” according to a news release. Pizza Hut has more than 6,300 U.S. restaurants.

A fight that broke out early Sunday morning at a Pizza Pizza and posted on YouTube began with a complaint that an order was taking too long, a witness told the Star. Paul Michael, 23, was at the restaurant when the brawl began at around 2 a.m. He said it started when a woman entered the restaurant on Queen St. E., at Broadview Ave., and complained that her pizza order was late. “They didn’t call her to tell her it was ready so in the middle of the Pizza Pizza, she started screaming how she wasn’t satisfied,” Michael said. “She...

A great pizza dough flipper probably can’t turn out one perfectly shaped pizza dough every nine seconds, but one California company’s robotic pizza dough press can make a great pie at that whiplash-inducing rate. Silicon Valley start-up Zume Pizza has nearly fully automated the process of making fresh, made-to-order pizza – and it’s streamlined the delivery process, too. If you live in Mountain View, California, and you order a pizza, it could be at your door as quickly as four minutes later. While other pizzas – especially the bake-at-home kind you buy at the grocery store – are also made...

SALINA — Schwan’s Company, which owns and operates the Tony’s pizza manufacturing facility in Salina, announced a $2-an-hour wage increase, an investment of about $5 million annually. The announcement was made as the plant and warehouse gear up to fill 170 open positions, according to a press release. The company is hiring for production line attendants, sanitation associates, maintenance team members and more, according to Chuck Blomberg, communication manager, Schwan’s Shared Services. In addition to the wage increase, the company also expanded its shift differential compensation, paying employees an extra $1.50 per hour if they work between 6 p.m. and...

It’s called the Pizza-Kini and it’s exactly what it sounds like: A $10,000 bikini made out of pizza. Yes, you read that price correctly. The ingenious/abominable creation, depending on whom you ask, comes from New York’s Villa Pizza Kitchen. In honor of National Bikini Day, the restaurant took their love of pizza to whole new levels, teaming up with a food stylist named Jessie Bearden on the bathing suit. ... Bearden handcrafts each Pizza-Kini, which accounts for its hefty prize tag. The trimming on the edges of the suit, for instance, is made from hand braided pizza dough. “There is...