A Passion for Pizza: A Bite from my Life

My passion in life has always been food and the pleasure it brings to our lives, be it the satisfaction of eating of a juicy mushroom Swiss burger, the comfort of sharing a New York style pizza and a beer with friends or the amazing flavor combinations of ethnic foods - be it an Indian spicy biryani, a chicken fajita in Texas or a Chicken Shawarma from the UAE.

Growing up in the relatively mono-cultural society of Ireland, the only ethnic exposure would have been the occasional Chicken kebab from Abrakababra or a Chicken Chow Mein from the local Chinese restaurant. Life became more exciting when I was hired as a sous chef and expert Moules Mariniere cook in a 5-star French restaurant in Maine, USA. This was followed by a year in Perth, Australia where a vibrant Italian & Thai culinary scene pushed my culinary interest to new levels. It wasn’t long before I realized my passion in life which was using my creativity and skills to create tasty food that brought together and delighted friends and extended family. Now that I identified my passion, I needed to find an organization that would leverage this passion and help take it to new levels. This was when Yum Brands entered my life.

Nineteen years ago, I joined Pizza Hut as a Culinary Scientist for their International restaurants based in Dallas, Texas. It was dream come true as it combined my passion of making great food with traveling around the world and learning about new cultures and cuisines. Since joining Yum I’ve had the pleasure of living and working in the USA, India and the Middle East, absorbing myself in these diverse cultures, embracing their diversity and soaking up their culinary wisdom. My focal point over almost twenty years has been the mighty Pizza Hut Pizza.

What is the magic of this category that’s catapulted it to be worth US$160 Billion in Annual Sales? I believe its success sits in its simplicity, ubiquity, versatility and craveability.

·??????Simplicity: ?In its most basic form it combines a bread base with a tasty sauce, mozzarella cheese and a combination of local delicious toppings that can be cooked through multiple cooking methods.

·??????Ubiquity: Although it’s famously and fundamentally an Italian dish, its popularity is celebrated in almost every country. You can see a similar format in many dishes around the world such as Manakish from Lebanon, Naan pizza from India or a topped sour dough from San Francisco. In 1958, the Carney Brothers introduced Pan pizza with delicious thick fried base and abundant and hearty toppings. It is this Pan pizza that is now sold in 18,000 Pizza Huts around the world.

·??????Versatility: The beauty of pizza is its versatility and what you can do with it. I’ve been fortunate to have worked with the company that has leveraged this creative license to the fullest. Whether as an everyday Hunger Quencher or a Special Occasion Treat, pizza steps up and delivers.

·??????Craveability: Its versatility makes its universally appealing but what separates the good from the great pizzas are some universal traits that should be there regardless of format or style:

·??????Mediterranean Inspired. The basic Italian build has been enhanced as the pizza travelled around the world, however the best sellers still combine those timeless characteristics of a flavorful bread base with tomatoes, cheese, olive oil and garlic. Popular variants to this combination do exist too like our Spicy Chicken Ranch or our indulgent Tandoori Paneer.

·??????Restaurant Quality. Regardless of whether you receive a pizza straight out of the oven in a restaurant or at home from a delivery driver, it must be restaurant quality and be above and beyond chain competitors, and better than what our consumers make at home. We encourage our team members to make every pizza with the passion and pride as if they were preparing it for their family.

·??????Balanced Flavor Journey. When designing a recipe, the abundance and flavor intensity should be balanced to deliver a pleasant flavor journey, from the initial taste sensation to the lingering after taste. It needs to be craveable enough for consumers to want to take another bite which carries subtle but prolonged flavor delivery.

·??????Slice Stability. The Pizza format is simple but genius. Once sliced it allows us to eat with our hands (more sensuous) and experience all its flavors together in one bite. However, on their quest to deliver optimum abundance some restaurants overload with toppings to a point that the slice collapses and toppings go everywhere but into your mouth. The convenience is lost and the flavor journey is disrupted. This is why slice rigidity is crucial!

·??????Visual Appeal. When photographing our products, we focus on achieving a “lick the screen appeal” from our images. We live in a world of constant visual stimulation where with a camera phone and Instagram our consumers can instantly communicate to the world. It is therefore important that the visual cues from our pizzas are stimulating, perfectly imperfect and showcase culinary beauty on every occasion. ?I use this basic pizza design knowledge to create great pizza concepts. However, the culture and processes within Yum has helped to elevate and enhance my Culinary Innovation success rate in the following ways:

·??????Quality Ingredients. I am always impressed with Pizza Hut’s strategy around sourcing only the best quality ingredients and equipment. We believe from the beginning that a craveable pizza can only be created with the best quality raw ingredients. This focus has since evolved into our Recipe for Good. Our Purposeful Food Sourcing strategy is especially relevant today for our sustainability conscious consumers who define themselves by the choices they make.

·??????Courageous Creativity. Creativity has always been a strength of Pizza Hut and it’s been this courage to Pioneer new categories through Innovation that has excited our consumers and maintained out leadership role in the Global Pizza category. Examples include our Cheesy Bites & Crown crust pizzas, our craveable Wing Street Wing Layer and our blockbuster mashup collaborations like our KFC pizza and our Lays Chips Stuffed Crust, both super buzzworthy and Instagramable.

·??????Consistency. Creativity and detail aren’t enough to create and sustain a successful Chain restaurant business model. It is vital to partner with Operations to deliver a consistent preparation process that can be executed by our staff time and time again. It goes without saying that executing a great pizza every time is better than making a superb pizza half the time.

·??????Collaboration. The importance of successful Supply Partnerships is critical to Pizza Hut. We have had amazing collaborations with our suppliers and have moved mountains together to bring great ideas to reality. Some examples include the gooey string cheese we developed for our Stuff Crust pizza in the ‘80’s, and our more recent dough blend we developed for our amazing new San Francisco Hand Crafted Pizza Layer. Most recently we’ve got our exciting Beyond Meat Collaboration that has delivered amazing results in the emerging Plant Based category.

·??????Staying Relevant. Ensuring we stay relevant with our consumers by riding mainstream trends has always been a priority for us. A key success factor here are identifying trends that are transitioning from emerging to mainstream so we’re still pioneers but not too far ahead of our time to only appeal to a small consumer base. A good example here would be the Tabasco campaign we recently launched which sits nicely into the mainstream Spicy trend and remains edgy and relevant to taste adventurers.

·??????Learn from the Best. Pizza Hut has always encouraged us to be avid learners so we can be the best in our field and make the biggest impact. I think back to my time securing an evening Culinary Arts Degree at El Centro College in Dallas, a Deep Dive Cheese Technology Course at University of Wisconsin and learning how to unlock the creative potential of my team by spending training to become a Creativity Facilitation expert with Synecticsworld in Boston. These experiences built valuable skills and has given me the opportunity to translate this knowledge into pioneering creativity processes and deliver rockstar campaigns and ingredients.

I’m as enthusiastic about making Pizza Hut great as I was nearly twenty years ago and look forward to many more years with this great brand. While there are many factors I cannot control I will continue to focus on those I can, which are - a continuous hunger for learning, the courage to always pioneer the category and push beyond the status quo and finally, a continuous commitment to staying young at heart so I stay emotionally connected with our ever-changing younger consumer base. For those reading this article and just starting out in their career, I recommend you to Be Brave, Have Faith in Yourself, Figure out what makes you happy and just go do it. As long as your head and your heart are connected then you’ll always excel in what you do!!