Pizza Hut's Very First Menu Was Incredibly Simple

The current Pizza Hut menu is a decidedly comprehensive affair. There are multiple different types of crust to choose from (Original Pan, hand-tossed, Thin 'N Crispy, Original Stuffed Crust), there are all sorts of sauces, and there are toppings galore, including eight different meats and eight veggie toppings, and these can be used on whole pies or half pies as the customer pleases. In short, you can create hundreds of different types of custom pizzas, given the choice you have in terms of crust, sauce, and toppings available at Pizza Hut.

And that's just the pizza. On a Pizza Hut menu in 2021 you will also find multiple different pasta dishes, chicken wings, mozzarella sticks, fries, salads, desserts, and more. It hasn't always been thus, however. In fact, the original 1958 Pizza Hut menu offered pizzas as the only food option. The pies came in two sizes and there were just seven topping options, not counting cheese alone.

Another thing that was smaller? The prices. The most expensive item on the original Pizza Hut menu was the large Pizza Supreme, which cost a whopping $2.50. (Of course, according to the inflation calculator of the American Institute for Economic Research, $2.50 in the year 1958 is equivalent to $22.94 today.) Here's a look at the first Pizza Hut menu.

The original Pizza Hut menu featured only one type of food, namely pizza, and that's how it would remain for a number of years following the founding of the chain in the year 1958. You could order a small or a large pizza, which were 10" or 13" in diameter, respectively, and there were seven toppings that could be added to the mozzarella cheese: green peppers, onions, sausages, mushrooms, pepperoni, anchovies, and hamburger. You could also order a half cheese, half sausage pie, or a Pizza Supreme with multiple toppings.

Adding additional toppings to a pizza cost 10 cents for a small pizza and 20 cents for a large. You could also order beer, pop, milk, or coffee, and that was it — no pastas, no desserts, no breadsticks or salads or anything else. But clearly the formula worked back then, as Pizza Hut expanded rapidly from being a one location restaurant to a global chain with more than 18,000 restaurants spread out over 100 countries, according to the parent company of the chain, Yum! Brands. For reference, that means most of the nations on the planet have a Pizza Hut, given the current count of 195 countries worldwide at present.