Little Caesar's

This pizza pizza chain made its name with ready-made pizzas for a super low price. But a change in marketing contributed to plunging sales. What happened to Little Caesar?

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Business on the Brink, a production from I
Heart Radio and How Stuff Works. Don your togas and
prepared to get crazy crazy, because this week we are
talking about Little Caesar's. This family owned company really found
their niche with a baked in focus on bang for
your buck. But in the nineties and early two thousand's

(00:26):
things weren't looking so hot and ready for them, and
they had to carry out new tactics to gain back
their piece of the pie. Find out how on Little
Caesar's on Business on the Brink. Hey everybody, I'm Jonathan

(00:50):
Strickland and I'm Ariel Casting, and welcome to our Happy
Pizza episode. I'm sure we'll have others. Yeah, I'm sad
that we did not think ahead to actually get pizza
because I am now craving pizza me too, and some
crazy bread because I like myself some nice, cheap Little Caesar's.

(01:12):
Yeah yeah, So this this came to us from Tony.
He asked it we cover Little Caesar's, and uh, you know,
Little Caesar's has a very quaint origin story. Quaint indeed,
because Little caesar started out as Little Caesar's Pizza treat.
It's adorable and it was founded in Garden City, Michigan,

(01:33):
in May of nineteen fifty nine. Yes, and the founders
of this restaurant, we're putting a pretty big risk here.
I mean that this was like a big all in
at the time. And you had Mike or Michael Ilitch.
And he had previously been a professional as a ball player,

(01:55):
baseball baseball player. I know you're a geek and not
much of a sports buff, but elementary school education alright,
Sorry sorry, I was more of a t ball so. Yes,
he actually played for the Detroit Tigers and he would
later uh spoiler alert team, yes, as well as a

(02:16):
hockey team. But he his baseball career ended early because
he had a knee injury and it took him out
that we see that a lot with professional sports players. Sure,
and rather than just sit back and and and you know,
grouse about things, he thought, you know what we should
we should open up a restaurant. Miama, my honey, bunny

(02:37):
of a wife. Yes, I actually love how. The official
company history of Little Caesar on their website states how
the how the store got started. Yeah, so they say,
quote the global chain that Little Caesar's is today began
with a blind date between Mike Ilitch and Mary and
Bayoff that was arranged by Mike's father in n Within
just a matter of months, the couple was married. That's

(03:00):
pretty amazing. It's adorable. Yeah. So they put in everything
they had, which was around about at ten thousand dollars
into opening up this first restaurant, So if it had failed,
it would have been pretty disastrous for the couple. So
fortunately our story does not open an end right here. No,
that would be a sad episode for you guys. Yeah,

(03:22):
and also you don't wonder how the heck did you
even learn about this place to to cover it now? Instead, Uh,
they opened up a restaurant which served pizza, but not
just pizza. They served other stuff too, yes, like chicken,
shrimp and fish. Yes, and pasta at some point, and
they boasted fifteen minutes service. Yes. This was something that

(03:44):
they built their brand on very early on. It was
known as being fast and affordable. Yes, and there it
was successful. The first week they sold two d and
nine pizzas, So it was pretty successful pretty early on,
and it didn't take very long, just a couple of
years before they had an opportunity to open another location.

(04:05):
And this meant that they had some decisions to make, right, Yeah,
Because when we when we're looking at companies that want
to expand, they can either put in the capital to
open a second store or multiple stores out of their
own money, or they can franchise exactly. Yeah, there's usually
like one of three options. You open up a brand
new location, you choose to franchise a location, or you

(04:27):
purchase someone else's store and you turn it into yours.
So in this case, they went with the franchise, which
made incredible business sense, right. And this particular franchise opened
in Warren, Michigan, and they also saw success through their
their their franchise owner was also being successful following the

(04:49):
same philosophy as the flagship store. Yes, and by nine
a bunch of other people got on board. They had
fifty restaurants. Yeah, so this was a pretty quick growing trend.
They even expanded into Canada. So they had some people
throwing down their hard earned loonies for pizza. Yeah. I

(05:13):
would throw down some hard earned loonies for pizza if
I earned loonies. Yes, we we were the buccaroos over
here though. So then they decided that they wanted to
have a better control over their supply chain and better
control over the quality of the stuff that they were

(05:34):
putting on their pizzas, which seems like a really good
business decision, and it might have been for a while.
We'll cover later how it has caused some issues going forward.
But the way they did that was they bought a
mushroom farm. Yes, so, uh, mushroom, mushroom, mushroom, mushroom pizza,
pizza badgers, it's a snake exactly. Eventually that mushroom farm

(05:59):
grew into Little Caesar's full service distribution company called Blue Line,
called Blue Line, and it did help them manage costs
for the campaign Little Caesar's was about to put in place. Yeah,
it also meant that over time Blue Line would end
up carrying a much wider variety of of stuff than
just mushrooms, but that that ends up being part of

(06:21):
our story later on anything more than mushrooms. I mean,
if someone likes, I don't know, pepperoni on their pizza,
it has been known to happen. I suppose you're right. Well,
this is also right around the time where they made
a decision that would also be associated with Little Caesar's
moving forward, which was that they were switching strictly to

(06:42):
a carry out pizza model. So you come in, you
pick up your pizza, and you go. There's no delivery,
there's no dine in. This has a few big advantages
from a business standpoint. You know, your your operating costs
are much lower, and Little Caesar's were typically the opening
up in areas that were known for having lower income households.

(07:05):
So by keeping those costs low, they could keep the
price of the pizza low and thus be able to
serve their communities. Plus not offering a place for people
to sit and eat that they could have smaller footprints,
so smaller stores, no weight staff, they had to pay
smaller kitchens exactly. So and again that for once, the

(07:25):
whole passing those savings onto you was really legit because
I don't know if you guys are ever familiar with
eating at Little Caesar's, but it did not set you
back very far, about like five or seven dollars, Yeah,
depending on what you wanted. Yeah. In nine this is
very important, we got the pizza pizza catchphrase. Yes, so

(07:46):
I was already a small child at that point, and
that is why I will forever associate Little Caesars with
pizza pizza. They get rid of that catch phrase later
and then bring it back and we'll get into that now.
This catch phrase put into place to promote their their
new deal, I suppose, which was getting two pizzas for

(08:08):
the price of one. Yes, and so you would you
would get pizza pizza. You would pay the price for
one pizza. You get twice as much pizza as you
were expecting, which meant that you would get a pizza
box so unwieldy that no one could fit it in
their car. And everyone hated it. I mean, they didn't
hate the two pizzas, that just hated the box. Yeah,

(08:29):
And that actually is true. The boxes that they had
to hold these pizzas were quickly a reviled item and
eventually phased out. But the campaign was successful. It brought
in tons of sales, and by the end of the
seventies they had over two restaurants. Yes, and it was

(08:49):
sort of the iconic ad campaign. You think of certain
restaurant chains and certain ad campaigns just jumped to mind,
like with for me, Wendy's is always going to be
where's the beef? Like that just became one of those
things in the eighties that you heard all the time
and with the Kings your away. Yeah. Uh, Little Caesar's

(09:09):
is pizza pizza, and McDonald's is Ronald will come for
you in the night. I need my mommy, Okay. So
by four Little Caesar's had expanded to four hundred locations,
and just two years later that number had doubled up
to eight hundred locations, callie, and they were hitting three
hundred and forty million dollars in sales. Yeah, and uh

(09:33):
by seven they had infected virus like all fifty states.
We're looking at you too, Hawaii, more like penicillin like,
well that also means Alaska. Yeah, yeah, they got all
the way up. Well, they had already started going through Canada.
It's it's getting through the Pacific that impresses me so
darn much. Fair enough, And they started to also make

(09:56):
a partnership with Kmart so that Little Caesar's could have
an actual location within Kmart stores, similar to how you'd
see a Subway or a McDonald's in Walmart, or like
or often you'll see like Starbucks in a lot of
different stores as well, and such. In the illages bought
the Fox Theater in Detroit, not to be confused with

(10:19):
the Fox Theater in Atlanta, No, but but equally opulent.
The Detroit one is pretty impressive, it is. And they
also bought office space right nearby and they renovated it
into the Little Caesar's World headquarters. Yes, they also continued
to maintain their original operating location back in in uh In, Michigan,

(10:40):
so that would remain open for quite some time. But well, well,
well when we get there will In the meantime, back
in they added square pan pizzas to the menu, Pan
pan Pan Pan pizza pizza. They would say, pan pan
and the commercials I remember when they came out, yeah,

(11:01):
and again the two for a price of one deal,
thus the pan pan. And they also started advertising on
the television, Yes, on the television the way the humans say, yeah,
I wrote it as Telly, right, so then you said
the television, but I am not British. So they were
also spending about five of their revenue on marketing at

(11:23):
this point, and things were going great, right, so like
there was nowhere else to go but up. They had,
you know, just started to hit their stratospheric climb and
then there was nothing. Nothing was gonna stop them now, right,
Well stop them, no delay them. Yes, well, we'll figure

(11:49):
out more about what Aerials alluding to in just a second,
but first let's take a quick break, all right. So
in they reached two billion dollars in sales and they
had four thousand locations or so, but they started experiencing

(12:10):
losses that their sales dropped right after they hit their
high in and continued to do so for the next
eight years. And uh. Part of the research the aerial
did when she was looking into this included a video
created by Company Man and Company Man ends up suggesting

(12:31):
three possible causes for this decline. Yes, one is competition,
So there are a lot of different pizza places that
were popping up all over the place, plus frozen pizza,
plus other take home food options like cross the market.
To a decrease in marketing because as sales dropped, Little
Caesar's flowed their marketing down, and we'll get a little

(12:53):
bit more into that. And then three franchise or dissatisfaction.
And after reading about all this, I mean that it
seems pretty cut and clear that that is what caused
their decline. Yeah, so when we're talking about competitors, I
mean there are a lot of different names that pop up, right,
There's there's Dominoes, Papa John's, Pizza Hut, California Pizza, Pizza Kitchen,
California Pizza Kitchen, and which you had both the physical

(13:15):
locations and the frozen dinner versions. Uh, do jour know
another one where you could go and then buy it
at the store. So there were a lot of different
options for pizza at a variety of different prices and
availabilities that made things difficult. Then you had other like
counter service type restaurants where all the foods already prepared

(13:36):
you just go in and grab whichever ones you want,
like Boston Market you had mentioned. So that was a
big issue. I think that the the marketing thing is
a really big one. To a lot of the the
criticisms I read around this time said that a big
issue was that the marketing firm, almost in a in

(13:58):
a need to justify its own existence, kept playing with
the marketing message for Little Caesar's, whereas Little Caesars, you know,
it had such an identifiable marketing message this pizza pizza,
low cost, super fast pizza. Uh, that some of the
franchise franchise e owners were saying, why are you messing

(14:19):
with this, you're confusing our brand identity. Well, I think
part of it was when Little Caesar saw that their
sales are declining, and they tried a bunch of things
prior to really adjusting their marketing, uh like adding spaghetti
to the menu, or giant giant long pizzas, uh, Pizza

(14:40):
by the foot, Pizza by the foot. But at a
certain point Little Caesar said, well, maybe it's our marketing
because they had always had this, as you said, very
identifiable but very tongue in cheek sort of campaign model.
And so they decided to do an agency review. And
originally their agency, Cliff Freeman and Partners, was going to
play along, and then they said, you know it, no, no,

(15:01):
if you want a new agency, we're gonna do it.
So they got a new agency in and they're the
ones who tried to focus on the value unless on
the humor, and so Cliff Freeman might have been playing
with the marketing message, and certainly with things like the
the hot and Ready pizzas where you don't order and
you don't wait for him, you just go in and

(15:22):
pick up a pizza and spaghetti and things like that
were hit and miss, But then they completely changed gears
with a brand new ad company. Yeah, and that was
where you started seeing franchise owners saying, uh, we're not
seeing any benefit from this. This is we're we're having
to spend money to pay into a marketing pool. Essentially,

(15:47):
there was a percentage that franchise owners had to pay
to go into this marketing pool, but they weren't necessarily
getting any value back from the marketing, or at least
that was their perception. Yeah. I think they had to
pay four cent of their sales, which is advertising. You know,
if you're if you're paying four of your revenue, but
it turns out like what you're getting back, it doesn't

(16:08):
you don't feel like you're seeing any benefit from that.
Maybe you're saying, well, that might work in that market
over there, but it's not working in my market. You
start to get increasingly frustrated and angry because it feels
like you're having to pay out money for something that
is not benefiting. But that wasn't the only problem they had. They,
like we said, Little Caesars was trying to adopt all

(16:30):
these different things that were new and to bring people in,
but they're also trying to take things away to save money.
So at one point they had franchisers get rid of
their soda fountains, which to me is crazy because if
you look at any like any breakdown of how much
soda costs to the customer versus how much it costs
to supply, it's like one of the highest profit margin

(16:53):
things out there. I mean, but if you've got someone
who's not eating in store, yeah they may not. So
it wasn't that was necessarily a bad idea, But they
kept instituting all these changes, and at the franchise ER's expense.
So they'd have to take out the fountain, they'd have
to put the fountain back in. They'd have to start
stalking spaghetti. They'd have to stop stalking spaghetti. They'd have

(17:13):
to all of these things that they were having to
do to try to meet Little Caesar's demands to make
up for what they were losing because their profit margins
were already pretty slim. Yeah, and you guy have five
dollar pizza. And this is this is where we see
the flip side of that franchise model, right, because on
on the one hand, you're an independent store owner, but

(17:34):
you're also beholden to the overall company. Uh, you know, approach,
so you only have limited freedom as as a franchise owner,
and if you don't have control over those decisions, then
you are ultimately spending all this money without having a
say in how that, you know, plays out, and it's

(17:57):
your business. So it's super frustrating. They didn't even have
a say in which distributors they used for ingredients, and
so they couldn't even make up their costs by finding
some super cheap ingredients. And they didn't even want you.
I mean, it was affordable, cheap pizza. It was budget pizza,
but it was also decent quality, right. It wasn't like

(18:20):
it was you know, you take a bite and you
get food poisoning type pizza. You didn't want to sell
dollar cafeteria elementary school cafeteria pizza, right, which I do.
Like I was about to say, I could really go
for some cafeteria pizza right now. In it was getting
so bad that the company essentially had to close four
hundred stores. So remember when we were talking about how

(18:42):
it doubled over that that like two year period they
lost those four hundred, you know, in which if they
had around four thousand is not the end of the world,
but it is still really big chunk. Yeah, and I
mean that still affects a large number of people. Yeah,
six to nine thousand people in fact. So then, uh,

(19:03):
the family, the Illage family, the founders of Little Caesar's,
created Illage Holdings, Incorporated in order to better manage the
family's assets, and Christopher, the son of Mike and Marian,
became the CEO and Marian was the vice chairwoman. At
that point, it wasn't enough, though, because by two thousand,

(19:26):
franchises were so unhappy that two d and fifty of
them filed a lawsuit against Little Caesar's. And this is
where they specifically were saying that, uh, that four of
the sales revenue going into the ad campaigns was objectionable,
and they also said that they were they felt like
they were being forced to use uh, low quality or

(19:49):
subpar ingredients. Yeah. It's hard when you are business partners
with a company and you don't feel like you can collaborate. Yeah. Well,
the law suit lasted eighteen months and then Little caesar
settled for a reported three d and fifty million dollars
over ten years. And this also resulted in the franchise

(20:11):
owners having the opportunity to choose a different uh provider
than Blue Line, the distributor company that we were talking
about earlier, the one that essentially was handling all the
ingredient distribution for these franchise owners, and it also gave
them a say in the advertising campaigns. So yeah, this

(20:31):
was the restructuring of the relationship. Which is a very
polite way of saying, whoop, see daisy, we've done We've
done messed up. I don't know, I like whipsy daisy,
we've done messed up A little bit better, I do too,
But that's not the right corporate legal way of saying that. Apparently,
the settlement did also include sharing some of Blue Line
Blue Lines profits with franchisees and for giving some franchise

(20:54):
e debt. Obviously, they got some of that debt from
making all the changes that they were forced to make, right,
So yes, essentially saying, we realized that we've put you
through hardship with these rapid changes, and so here we're
going to assume some of that that debt that you've
accumulated as a result of of trying to agree to

(21:15):
all those changes. By two thousand and one, they were
only spending three million dollars on marketing, which you know
for for that company, was a significant drop. In two
thousand two, Kmart filed for bankruptcy and so a lot
of them closed, which meant a lot of Little Caesars closed.
And then beyond that, Kmart started replacing Little Caesars with

(21:36):
their own little k cafes. Yeah, so this was another
big blow to Little Caesar's overall. But while this marked
kind of a low point, according to you, Ariel, this
is where Little Caesar's was about to get better better, sorry,
better better. Okay, we'll talk more about that after the break. Okay, So, Ariel,

(22:07):
you mentioned that Little Caesar's was poised to get better better.
How did that happen? Well, first, they got rid of
their new ad agency now the one that was messing
things up, and getting rid of all the humor. And
again I don't think focusing on value was a bad idea, Yeah,
but the method of messaging the actual like the fact

(22:28):
that it lost a law of the personality that had
set Little Caesar's aside, is probably what a lot of
people point towards. Yeah, you never you don't have that
brand recognition anymore. And by two thousand eleven they had
increased their marketing budget back up to a little over
twenty million dollars. Now, before we get to two thousand eleven,
there's still a lot of stuff we've got to talk
about in the early two thousand's. Yes, So in two

(22:49):
thousand two, for example, they introduced a deep dish pizza
for eight dollars. Deep deep, so deep that the eckos
so keep they deeped it twice. That's that's okay, I
take it back, keep it in, keep it in. So
then we get the hot and Ready pizzas where you

(23:09):
could get a one topping hot and ready in stuff,
just a cheese pizza. Um, where again as five dollar
type thing. And this this is one of those things
I like. At this point, I was no longer eating
Little Caesar's had moved on in my life, so I
never really had the hot and ready type experience where
you just walk in and I guess they had specific

(23:31):
ones like these are the pepperoni pizzas, these are the
cheese pizzas, and you descrab one. Yeah, I mean you can.
Before you could order your pizza and you can pick
it up. You could still do that, but now you
have the option to just I just want a pepperoni
pizza walk in, it's guaranteed to be there. And you know,
I say, I've been saying all along five dollar pizzas.
Their pizzas very in price, but these specific one top

(23:51):
being Hot and Ready pizzas were five bucks and it
actually has caused a little bit of consternation more recently,
but we'll get into that, okay. But now they're back
to what Little Caesars is known for, affordable value pizza, right,
And they also decided to simplify. They moved to a
one size for their classic pizzas, a one size for

(24:13):
their deep dish pizza, so they didn't offer them in
different sizes. Now, it was this is why it is. Yeah,
you come in, this is the size that that that
you're going to be dealing with. You're gonna get an
extra large, whether you like it or not. At one point,
they actually did increase their pizza size to be four
inches larger than the standard pizza size, so small would
be four inches larger than a regular small, their medium

(24:34):
is four inches larger than a regular medium, so on
and so forth. All of these positive steps back in
the right direction meant that between two thousand and eight
and two thousand and fifteen, they were the fastest growing
pizza chain in the US based on net number of
stores added per year, and Detroit gave Mike and Marian
the key to the city. They did because Mike and

(24:56):
Marian we have really been focused on helping better Detroit
where they're based out. There's actually if you ever really
do a search on the Illage family, there are an
incredible number of amazing stories of their support of Detroit.
Uh and a lot of it was stuff that Mike

(25:18):
Ilitch when he was still alive, that he was very
quietly doing. He never sought any publicity for it. I'll
include a little story about that at the end when
we get our fun facts. But yeah, so this is
at the point in two thousand nine they were back
up to one point two billion dollars in sales. Things
that really turned around and become, you know, again a

(25:41):
positive direction for the company. Yes, we also got a
new ad agency, parton f Graff, who brought back the
pizza Pizza slogan. Yeah, so, thank goodness as a part
of a national ad kimpaign order has been restored. I know,
I don't know. I don't know how I could have
survived if they didn't bring it back, or how little
see could have. Yeah, So they also ended up creating

(26:03):
easier ways to become a franchise owner so that it
could encourage more people to open stores. You know, they
had faced so many store closings over the recent past.
Now they were looking at ways to be able to
grow and to make that as smooth a a process
as possible, kind of like a career path up to

(26:26):
franchise e. In two thousand fourteen, they opened a new
headquarters in Detroit, double the space with the hope of
bringing six hundred jobs to the area, and in sixteen
they once again regained their position of third largest pizza
chain in the world. They had been third largest a
couple of times in the past, but then had started
to slip during those rough years. They regained that title

(26:49):
and by seen they had more than five thousand locations
in more than eighteen countries. They also opened up the
Little Caesar's Arena, which I originally imagined as a sort
of gladiatorial combat arena where pizzas fighted out for a
supremacy they might. I mean, it is a multi purpose arena,
so that that could be one of the many purposes.

(27:11):
It could be seen also is tragically when Mike Ilitch
passed away and Marian was became the sole owner of
the company. Yeah, it's really sad. Into that it's something
else sad. In two thousand eighteen, the original Little Caesar's
location closed. Yeah. Yeah, uh, there was a whole news item.
I watched the little news report about it, and the

(27:32):
reporters were actually standing outside holding boxes and Little Caesar's
and talking about it. There was another news item about
Little Caesar's that year. Yeah, this one's this one's a
little contentious. It is. So there was a franchiser in
Kansas City. Yeah, guy from Utah who owned a whole
bunch of different shops in Kansas City, I think all

(27:53):
of the Little Caesar's in Kansas City he owned. Yeah,
and he wanted to pay He wanted people to pay
five for their Hot and Ready pizzas. But Little Caesar's
had launched this five dollar national campaign, national campaign that
was supposed to be across all Little Caesar's locations, and
so there was back and forth. They once asked him
to bring it down to five dollars. He did, He

(28:14):
went back up to he couldn't make a profit in
Kansas City at five dollars. Yeah, he said essentially that
if he was paying, if he was selling these for
five dollars a pizza, that he was going to be
operating either at a loss or just you know, flatline.
And at one point he even started keeping his royalty
checks that he owed them to make up that money.

(28:34):
So a whole bunch of battle, his little Caesar's closed
down all of them, every single little Caesar's in Kansas City,
which was twenty one locations at that point. So Kansas
City from that point went without. They were Caesar less.
I know that's only funny to me. But in two
thousand eighteen, we got reserve in ready pizzas, Yes, where

(28:56):
you can actually use an app, right, and you select
the on a pizza you want, You put it in
your app, and it's ready to go at the little
Caesar's location you're heading to, and you get a code.
You do so they put it in like a little
like Amazon locker type. Yeah, it's like party part heating heating,
oven parts safe and you put in your code and

(29:17):
you get your pizza. I think that this means that
you can get something more than just a pepperoni pizza
like you can wear something specific and that since they
know which box you're going to be going towards, they
can just load that into their What tells me is
that if you're very determined and very fast, and you
can get through a thousand different number of combinations very quickly,

(29:37):
you can snag someone's pizza. You're it's a five dollar pizza.
Come on, just get your own. Well, if you're getting
more than one topping, it's more than five dollars. I'm
always looking for the perfect heist here. Ariel, all right, well,
I'm gonna I don't know what to say to that. Uh,
you can technically get Little Caesar's delivered, not through Little

(30:01):
Caesar's but some third party services like door Dash whatnot. Sure,
we'll deliver it to you. It's not something Little Caesar
seeks out or sets up, but it is available in
some places. Little Caesar's recently did something I think is
pretty crazy. What's that They made a bet on the
n C double A. There was like a number one

(30:21):
seat in a number fifteen seat, and they bet on
the underdog. And they said that anyone who had been
on that team, if that underdog one would get a
free pizza, and then that they did one. Yes, everybody
got a whole everybody, a whole bunch of people got
free lunch. Nice. Nice. Yeah, not a not a bad
way to drum up some marketing, you know. And and uh,

(30:43):
I'm sure that while the the free pizzas well the
free to the the people who made the bets not
freedom little caesars. They might have taken a little bit
out of the bottom line, but I mean, that's that's
a marketing cost. And they were spending a hundred and
seventy six million dollars in marketing that there's no way
it was a hundred seventy six million dollars with the pizza. Now.
So then the ad agency that they had been using

(31:06):
closed down, Yes, Spartan graph close its doors after ten years.
And I didn't hear which ad agency got the position
after them. I don't know if they've selected one. They
might still be in that selection process. And they have
recently started to experiment using the impossible meat product, which

(31:28):
we've seen you know in a lot of other places
like like Burger King. Yes, but they're they're experimenting with
a first in impossible foods, impossible meat, which is with
Impossible sausage. Yeah. And this is because, as it turns out,
sausage is a more popular pizza topping for Little Caesar's
than say, hamburger, which is what Impossible Foods was originally

(31:48):
going to give to them, is just I guess, ground
up impossible burger. Yeah, but now they've made Impossible sausage,
well at least fifty prototypes that they're testing. Yes, so
this is not something that you can just go out
and order at your local Little Caesar's. Mayor it may
or may not end up in a few test markets.
Although to be honest, to see how enthusiastically the products

(32:11):
have been received in other places, I would not be
surprised to see this kind of take off as well.
I mean, they really want to. Most of their audience
is carnivore. Most of Little Caesar's audience consumer bass is carnivorous,
and so they still want who appealed to those people
as well. So here's we're in the fun facts section,

(32:32):
and I'm going to tell you my fun fact because
it's not in this list from what I can see,
and it really I think is phenomenal. So, and there's
a lot of fun facts we can't go through all
of them, I might post some one Facebook. All right,
So my gillich um heard that Rosa Parks, the famous

(32:52):
and civil rights she had been robbed and attacked in
her Detroit home. And so uh there were local community
leaders who are looking to try and and help her
because I mean, she was in her eighties at that point,
and Mike Ilitch quietly, with no publicity whatsoever, paid her

(33:16):
rent for the rest of her life. That is amazing. Yeah. Well,
then my favorite fun fact, which can't live up to
that one, but it's still pretty cool, is the fact
that Little Caesar's has a homeless outreach called Little Caesar's
Love Kitchen. It's basically a giant pizza truck that gives
pizza the homeless and also people who are victims of disaster. Yeah,
and in fact, the company has been the recipient of

(33:37):
many presidential awards for this this particular work. So yeah,
it's you know, before I read your notes on this,
before I did some research of my own, before I
looked into all this, I always just associate Little Caesar's
with cheap pizza. It was just in the same cheat
pizza and a cute marketing campaign that I remember from
my childhood, and I don't remember it, like, I never

(34:00):
ever thought of it as being bad pizza. It never
occurred thought that never really was how I associated it.
But I didn't think of it as cheap pizza. I
never knew about the outreach the company had for its
community and uh And I think that's a real shame
because to me, like, that's an incredible story that a
company that has built itself on uh, marketing value pizza,

(34:24):
particularly to people who otherwise would find it difficult to
you know, purchase something like that, and then turning around
and using some of that money to help those very
same people. It's a that's a great story. It is.
It is a bit of a shame that it's not
more well known. But I also kind of like the
fact that the i is haven't tutored their own horn
about it, right They're not. They're clearly not doing it

(34:46):
to seek publicity. Yeah, they're not doing it as a
business move to get more business, right So, and in
that respect, I agree, it's it's you know, a noble undertaking.
It's just one that like, if I had known about it,
I probably would have been like, dude, you know, let's
get little Caesars. I mean, if you want to spend
a week on a treadmill, you could still get a
cheese pizza. It's like a month a month on a treadmill.

(35:11):
Just get a treadmill desk. Well, we we need to
go and get pizza. So in order for us to
do that, we have and I'll just eat it in
front of Jonathan. Yep, I'll just I'll smell it and
cry so Ariel. If people want to reach out and
suggest a company that we should cover on Business on
the Brink, how do they do it? Well, they do
it by emailing us. And that email is feedback at

(35:33):
the Brink Podcast dot Show. Yep. And you can visit
our website that's the Brink Podcast dot Show. You'll find
an archive ball or our past episodes. You'll find more
info about your beloved hosts and until next time. I
have been Jonathan's Strickland and I have been aerial casting.

(35:53):
Business on the Brink is a production of I Heart
Radio and How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my
heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.