Pizza Hut Just Broke The Record For The World's Largest Pizza

There's something delectable about biting into a piece of pizza. Whether you're particularly fond of the epic crust, the spicy pepperoni, or the ooey-gooey layer of mozzarella (who doesn't love that part?), the pizza pie is a favorite food of many. This is likely why Pizza Hut's recent announcement that they will be bringing back the beloved "The Big New Yorker" has been met with much fanfare. 

What makes this pizza unique? Well, Hut Life offers that this mammoth 16-inch pie has larger-than-normal slices that can be folded over for a novel pizza-eating experience. The traditional The Big New Yorker includes double pepperoni or you can opt to select your own favorite topping. This limited-time offering will be available for $13.99 and up, depending on what ingredients you choose. And, if you want to get this release date on your calendars, it comes out on January 31 for Hut Rewards members and February 1 for everyone else. The roughly 3700 people that signed a petition to bring this iconic pizza pie back have something to celebrate, although they would love to see this become a permanent member of the Pizza Hut menu.  

Fans of this oversized pizza will be happy to know that The Big New Yorker isn't exactly making a quiet comeback either: Pizza Hut's gargantuan pie's re-emergence is breaking world records. 

This pizza boasted 8,800 pounds of cheese

Pizza Hut's Big New Yorker lived up to the name "Big" by shattering the Guinness World Record for the World's Largest Pizza. According to QSR, it was said that this nearly 13,990 square-foot mega pie was created at the Los Angeles Convention Center using "13,653 pounds of dough, 4,948 pounds of sweet marinara sauce, over 8,800 pounds of cheese, and roughly 630,496 regular and cupped pepperoni." And if you're worried about food waste, the pizza pieces were donated to charities in the LA area. This joint effort between Pizza Hut and well-known YouTuber Airrack has been deemed a huge success, smashing the previous 2012 record held by a group of chefs in Rome, Italy. The Guinness World Records reports that their pie was 13,580 square feet. 

What prompted Pizza Hut to embark on this massive endeavor? According to the company's CEO, David Graves, "We were the first to deliver a pizza. We're the first to take an order over the Internet ... We've always done big, exciting things" (per CNN). It would seem that setting a size-related world record is apropos, especially when celebrating Pizza Hut's heftiest offering. Interestingly, the folks at Guinness World Records also report that Pizza Hut holds the world record for the Highest Altitude Pizza Delivery on Land after transporting a pizza to Mount Kilimanjaro's lofty summit (a height of 19,347 feet) in 2016. One can only wonder what record this purveyor of pizza will try to shatter next.