Piz­za Hut, the 68-year-old chain that has long strug­gled with grow­ing com­pe­ti­tion and out­dat­ed restau­rants, will be sold for US$2.7 bil­lion by par­ent com­pa­ny Yum Brands.

Yum Brands said Tues­day that the pri­vate eq­ui­ty firm Lon­gRange Cap­i­tal will buy Piz­za Hut, ex­clud­ing the main­land Chi­na busi­ness, for about US$1.5 bil­lion.

In main­land Chi­na, Piz­za Hut will be pur­chased by Yum Chi­na Hold­ings Inc for ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$1.2 bil­lion, the com­pa­ny said. Chi­na is Piz­za Hut’s sec­ond-largest mar­ket out­side the US, ac­count­ing for 19 per cent of sales. Yum Chi­na Hold­ings Inc spun off from Yum Brands and be­came an in­de­pen­dent com­pa­ny in 2016.

Yum Brands, which al­so owns KFC and Taco Bell, be­gan to ex­plore its op­tions for Piz­za Hut in No­vem­ber. Last year, Yum Brands’ glob­al sales rose five per cent but Piz­za Hut’s sales fell twop­er cent.

In Feb­ru­ary, Yum Brands an­nounced plans to close 250 US Piz­za Hut lo­ca­tions. Piz­za Hut had 19,974 restau­rants world­wide at the end of last year.

“Piz­za Hut has long been the weak link in Yum’s port­fo­lio,” Neil Saun­ders, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Glob­al­Da­ta, wrote Tues­day. “De­spite ef­forts to re­vi­talise the brand and shut un­der­per­form­ing lo­ca­tions, it has be­come in­creas­ing­ly clear that push­ing the di­vi­sion back in­to growth will re­quire a lev­el of in­vest­ment and pa­tience that Yum is just not pre­pared to com­mit to.”

Piz­za Hut was found­ed in 1958 in Wi­chi­ta, Kansas, by two broth­ers who bor­rowed $600 from their moth­er to open the store. They chose the name be­cause their sign on­ly had room for eight let­ters.

Piz­za Hut’s fa­mil­iar red roof de­buted in 1969 and by 1971 it was the top piz­za chain in the world by sales. Pep­si­Co ac­quired Piz­za Hut in 1977 but spun off its restau­rant di­vi­sion—which be­came Yum Brands—in 1997.

By the 1980s, Domi­no’s was the fastest-grow­ing US piz­za com­pa­ny, buoyed by its promise of 30-minute de­liv­ery. As piz­za car­ry­out and de­liv­ery grew in pop­u­lar­i­ty, Piz­za Hut was sad­dled with large, dine-in restau­rants. In 2020, even as piz­za de­liv­ery boomed dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, Piz­za Hut closed 300 US restau­rants.

Piz­za Hut has 12 restau­rants in Trinidad and To­ba­go, with 11 lo­cat­ed in Trinidad and one in To­ba­go. The Piz­za Hut fran­chise in T&T is op­er­at­ed by Pres­tige Hold­ings Ltd.

In Au­gust 2025, Pres­tige Hold­ings se­cured the rights to op­er­ate the Piz­za Hut brand in Pana­ma. Chair­man of the lo­cal fran­chise com­pa­ny, Chris­t­ian Mout­tet, it ex­pects to open two Piz­za Hut restau­rants in 2026 in Pana­ma, as part of a mul­ti-year De­vel­op­ment In­cen­tive Agree­ment, he said.

For its fi­nan­cial year end­ing De­cem­ber 31, 2025, Pres­tige re­alised a 5 per cent in­crease in rev­enue to $1.42 bil­lion from $1.35 bil­lion. (AP)