Back in the 1970s, I worked at Pizza Hut, and I always thought that the biggest cost in making pizza was the labor...
Back then, we made the dough every day (both "thin" and "pan" crusts, totally different recipes). Though we had spice mixes for the sauces (3 different sauces: 1 for thin, another for thick, and 1 for the pasta we served). We also had quite a bit of prep work every morning: As I recall, the opening cook had to be there to get started at about 7:00am, for an 11:30am opening. I believe that everything now comes into the stores pre-done: The sauce, the dough, and toppings, etc.
Pizza hut was a lot better back then, as I recall.
Mark
As a kid of the 70s, I agree that Pizza Hut was a lot better.
Back in the 90s when I was in a bad way on many fronts personally (a lot self inflicted) I made good friend who was a waitress at one that was close to the tech college I went to.
After graduating and getting a job in my present city, it was a number of years before I had reason to stop in that area.
I started going to a specialist just above that city of the Pizza Hut kind of regularly. One late morning I swung in there just for some pizza.
My friend was still there and I was remembered. She probably made too much in tips to leave. She was a super people person.
My wife starting coming along and we would stop in at every trip. It was a highlight of the day for us both.
After about a year there was a short pause in visits. A few weeks we stopped in and found out that she had died in her sleep of a freak brain problem. That was all I could find out. She was at most early 40s. My main regret was that none of us ever thought to exchange contact information. It would be a given that things would click.