Pizza Hut is following the footsteps of dozens of other major restaurant chains and joining the movement for plant-based meat. The Plano, TX-based company announced today that it has partnered with MorningStar Farms’ Incogmeato label to top one of its pies with plant-based sausage.
Dubbed the Garden Specialty Pizza, said pie will be available starting October 23 for $10 per pizza for a limited time at the 3602 E. Thomas Road Pizza Hut location in Phoenix, AZ, according to a press release sent to The Spoon. “Limited supply” in this context means until supplies last, which, given the current craze for plant-based meat products among consumers, could be mere hours.
For both companies, releasing a pizza topped with plant-based meat is a way to ride the coattails of the alt-meat craze. The partnership allows Pizza Hut to compete with the likes of Little Caesars, who tested a plant-based sausage pizza with Impossible earlier this year. For Kellogg-owned MorningStar, promoting its new plant-based brand via a major restaurant chain could help the company’s ongoing efforts to reinvent itself as an innovative alt-meat company on par with Beyond Meat and Impossible, rather than a decades-old peddler of first-generation meat alternatives.
A pie topped with plant-based meat isn’t the only pizza innovation that particular Phoenix Pizza Hut location will see. The Garden Specialty Pizza will be served up in a round box The Hut has developed with pizza-tech pioneer Zume, which recently acquired a company to manufacture its own line of more sustainable packaging.
For Pizza Hut, Zume designed a box that uses less packaging than its traditional square counterpart, takes up less space in a customer’s fridge, and, most importantly, keep the pizza hotter in transit. It’s also industrially compostable. Pizza Hut says once the limited run in Phoenix is over, it will look at ways to distribute the box more widely in future.
All proceeds from both initiatives will be donated to Arizona Forward, an organization that brings businesses and civic leaders together to develop sustainability goals for the state.
Leave a Reply