East Wall

The First Pizza Hut

Molly Mollohan and Maude Beech had convinced Dan Carney to open a pizzaria in the old B&B Lunch located behind the Dog & Shake. He had two problems, however: He didn’t have any money. On top of that, he had never made pizza in his life.

Dan Carney started by bringing in younger brother Frank, then a freshman at Wichita University (later WSU), as a partner. Their combined savings wasn’t enough, so they turned to their mother, Mary, who gave them a $600 loan to start their new business.

They had the money, but they didn’t have their product. Luckily, Dan and Frank’s sister, Sally Carney Jonas, introduced her brothers to John Bender. Bender had worked in a pizzaria in Bloomington, Indiana, before coming to Wichita to serve at McConnell Air Force Base. Bender invited the brothers over to show them how to make pizza. While he had no trouble with the sauce, Bender had never made the dough before and didn’t remember the recipe. He resorted to making a french bread dough out of his wife Peggy’s Encyclopedia of Cooking. There was no time to let the dough rise, so Bender rolled it out and cooked it as it was. The result was the thin and crispy crust that distinguished Pizza Hut’s product from others in the market.

Images:

LEFT: Carney's Market on the corner of Bluff and Kellogg, along with another Wichita fast food chain, Dog & Shake. The original Pizza Hut was located to the left of this view and is not in the shot.

RIGHT: John Bender was offered a one-third partnership in Pizza Hut in exchange for his recipe and for teaching the Carneys to make pizza. Courtesy of the Carney Collection, Ablah Library Special Collections.

Opening Night

Pizza Hut’s grand opening was delayed in part by some old bird’s nests. Like much of the equipment in the Carney brothers’ restaurant, the stove came secondhand and in disrepair. When the brothers fired up the oven, the nests inside caught fire, which meant the crew had to repaint the restaurant. The old roasting oven also didn’t generate enough heat to cook the pizzas, so Dan and Frank clipped the leads to the thermostat, drilled out bigger holes in the gas lines, and started the oven again. Finally the oven was hot enough to properly cook the pizza. It was also hot enough to melt its control knobs. Saturday, May 31, 1958: Dan Carney remembered opening night was, in his words, “absolute chaos.”

The ancient cash register didn’t have an amount key larger than $1, so the night was punctuated by the register ringing over and over when larger orders were placed. The oven had hot spots, so pizzas had to be moved constantly to keep them from burning. None of the ingredients were precooked. Frank recalled a tossed crust catching in the blades of a fan.

Pizza Hut served 150 customers during its first night. It may have been chaos, but a course was set on that Memorial Day weekend that would take the little pizza restaurant on the corner of Bluff and Kellogg to extraordinary heights.

What's In a Name

Bev Carney suggested the name “Pizza Hut.” Why? According to Dan, because the sign could only hold eight letters, and the first five had to be “PIZZA.”

Image: The original Pizza Hut, on the corner of Bluff and Kellogg. Courtesy of the Carney Collection, Ablah Library Special Collections. Case Contents:

Wooden Rolling Pin. This rolling pin was used by the Carney brothers in the first Pizza Hut to flatten and shape the dough for pizzas. A reproduction is featured in the tactile library. Dan and Gayla Carney Collection,2017.7.199 Lowell D. Holmes Museum of Anthropology.