Pizza Hut Cuts the Cheese to Add More Hip Room

If Pizza Hut wants cool cat Adam Lambert to hang out in one of their restaurants, they're going to have to do a little more than add pasta to the menu and throw a few TVs up on the wall. How about hiring only cute boys? (Fox Images)"]

Pizza Hut, the world's largest user of cheese and America's most popular pizza brand, is changing its name. In an attempt to make it more of a hip hang-out for the cool crowd, its tossing away the "Pizza" and simply going with "The Hut."

Recent additions to the menu like pasta, as well as new in-store features like flat screen televisions broadcasting CBS programs such as "Wheel of Fortune" and "Entertainment Tonight," reflect the company's move to take its brand into a new era. (Back in April it introduced the Pizza Hut "Twintern," an employee who uses Twitter to update customers on store events and pop culture news.)

The first Pizza Hut opened in 1958 in Wichita, Kansas and now there are more than 10,000 Pizza Hut locations worldwide.

Pizza Fact No. 1: Men wearing muscle shirts when answering the door order pepperoni three times more than any other kind of pizza. (San Jose Mercury News, Food Section, 1/11/95)

Pizza Fact No. 2: More pizza is consumed during Super Bowl week than any other week of the year. (Source: Kraft Foods, Northfield, Ill.)

Pizza Fact No. 3: Of all pizza toppings, anchovies are our least favorite.

Pizza Fact No. 4: A popular pizza topping in Russia consists of a mix of sardines, tuna, mackerel, salmon and onions.

Pizza Fact No. 5: Pizza Hut was the brainchild of two college students, two brothers in fact, who borrowed $600 from their mom to launch their dream of creating America's best pizza eatery.

The Beat wonders how much pizza YOU eat in a month? Who serves up the best pizza in your hometown?

The Beat is also curious as to how much pizza American Idol runner-up and RollingStone cover boy Adam Lambert puts away in a month (the boy was looking a little chunky in those skin tight jeans towards the end of the season and in our opinion should cut back on the cheese). Hey, you can bet on which American Idol 8 star's new album will debut highest on Billboard's Top 200 chart.

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