Little Caesars promotes its new Planteroni Pizza, topped with Field Roast Plant-Based Pepperoni, in a hilarious ad, featuring mythical creatures.
The spot opens with a young woman tasting the new Planteroni Pizza and saying she can’t believe how flavorful it is. “Plant-based pepperoni that actually tastes good? That can’t be real!” exclaims Bigfoot, who’s crocheting on the sofa. Sasquatch asks an alien what he thinks about it and it turns out the alien believes the same thing – that there can’t be delicious plant-based pepperoni. At this point, a ghost shows up, willing to try the pizza, but realizes he can’t grab it, all while declaring that delicious plant-based pepperoni doesn’t exist.
“You better Be-Leaf it! The new Planteroni Pizza, made with Field Roast Plant-Based Pepperoni, just $8.49, online only,” the voiceover says at the end of the commercial.
Little Caesars, which partnered with Greenleaf Foods Field Roast brand, maker of plant-based meat and cheese products, to launch its Planteroni pizza, announced that it will offer the vegetarian-friendly pizza in six major markets.
With pizza, less is never more. More is more. More slices, more toppings, more cheese. Never was that more apparent than in 1993, when Americas three biggest pizza chains – Pizza Hut, Dominos, and Little Caesars – launched nearly identical short-lived super-pizza concepts: the Bigfoot, the Dominator, and the Big! Big! Pizza, respectively. What all three pizzas had in common was that they were marketed not on how they tasted, but on how enormous and impractical they were. The Little Caesars Big! Big! Pizza bragged about weighing more than 4 pounds, while the Dominator was an entire yard long – so big it didnt fit in most delivery vehicles.
For a while, giant pizzas were everywhere. Pizza Hut rolled out an expensive ad campaign and even bought a blimp to promote the Bigfoot. But a few years later, the fad was over. Despite online petitions and persistent social media chatter, the Bigfoot and its ilk have never been resurrected. In the era of smartphone-based delivery services, massive pizzas arent even really practical. But for one bright, shining moment, size really did matter. The story of the giant pizza conflict is one filled with massive highs and delicious lows.Photo:
The Bigfoot was a pizza that was sold from 1993 to the mid-1990s by Pizza Hut. It was a large-sized pizza, measuring 12 inches by 24 inches (or 2 square feet), and was cut into twenty-one slices. This made it ideal for parties. The customer could choose up to three different toppings for their order of the Bigfoot.
At one point in 1993, Pizza Hut put in a free trial month of HBO with a purchase of the Bigfoot as a limited-time offer. A free video rental from Blockbuster Video was also offered with the Bigfoot for a limited time. There was also the “Bigfoot Big Six“, which was a variation with six toppings and sold for the same price as the standard Bigfoot.
The Bigfoot Pizza was all about size and value. It was two feet long by one foot wide and so big that you would get it in a bag. They sliced it twice lengthwise and then made many horizontal cuts that would give you 21 square pieces of pizza.
Testing had gone very well and the press was for the most part extolling the virtues of the Bigfoot. So by the summer of 1993, it was ready to start expanding availability. Coupons and promotions started running throughout the United States, extolling the value and size of this unusually large pizza.
So Much Oil! If you were a frequent Bigfoot Pizza eater, you would quickly figure out that the way the pizza was baked and cut made for much oilier pieces of pizza towards the center slices. If you liked an oily slice, you would go straight down the middle. It was my least favorite part of the pizza. So I would eat it first to get it over with before moving onto the crusty and less oily side slices.
As a national pizza chain, Pizza Hut is constantly responding to rivals. One chain that was challenging Pizza Hut was Little Caesars Pizza. Little Caesars was pulling away customers not on taste or speedy delivery, but on value, more pizza for your dollar.
Pizza Hut knew that margins would be slim, but the fervor over its introduction painted a rosier picture of the product’s potential. At its peak in 1993, the Bigfoot represented 18 percent of Pizza Hut’s sales. By July of 1994, that number had fallen to just 8 percent and looked to be trending further down.
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