Case study: Pizza Hut, Inc‪.‬

On June 15th, 1958, two brothers opened the first Pizza Hut restaurant in Wichita, Kansas (U.S.) by purchasing second-hand equipment and renting a small building on a busy cross-road. The concept was relatively new at the time and the brothers quickly saw the potential of this new enterprise. A short time later, they begun to open new restaurants and developed schedules for franchised outlets. Their chain started growing up very fast, ten years later Pizza Hut Inc. counted almost 300 restaurants. In 1986, it had 5,025 domestic units and annual sales of almost $2 billion. Half of the outlets were franchised.
A Pizza Hut restaurant is characterized by a particular freestanding design with a prominent red roof. The restaurants are full-service, eat-in/carryout with about 60 to 90 seatings, open from 11 a.m. to midnight.
Pizza Hut´s franchisees have special rights to most of the smaller restaurants, company-owned outlets stand in metropolitan with a high population density.