Depending on where you live, you may or may not know of Little Caesars, an international
juggernaut with locations in North America, Asia, the Middle East, Australia and Latin
America.
The $5 pizza restaurant was founded in Detroit Michigan in the late 1950's by the man who
would later own the Detroit Red Wings and the Detroit Tigers.
While we delve into everything about the little pizza place that could, let's take a crack
at the top 10 things you might not know about Little Caesars.
Little Caesars is the Third Largest Pizza Chain
If you have heard of them, you may recall Little Caesars from the late 80's and early
90's, only for it to seemingly disappear.
Despite that, though, Little Caesars is actually the third largest pizza chain in the United
States based on gross sales, meaning that it sells more than every other pizza chain
outside of Pizza Hut and Domino's pizza (it's net sales, or profit, is another story, but
considering that they're famous for their $5 pizzas it's actually pretty amazing to
hear that they outsell places like Papa John's, which is a lot more expensive than Little
Caesars).
That means that they're doing a ton more transactions than the competition.
So, what are the top 10 pizza joints?
From top to bottom they are Pizza Hut, Domino's, Little Caesars, Papa John's, Papa Murphy's,
California Pizza Kitchen, Marco's Pizza, Round Table Pizza, Mellow Mushroom and Cici's Pizza.
Considering that many of those aren't located in all 50 states and that some don't even
sell hot pizza (like Papa Murphy's), it's not looking like Little Caesar's reign as
a top three pizza chain is at risk anytime soon!
Before we continue, show us some love, and click that subscribe button and hit that notification
bell!
The First Little Caesars Opened in 1959 and is Still Open Today
The first Little Caesars was opened by the husband and wife duo of Mike and Marian Illitch
in May of 1959 in Garden City, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit.
The building the original restaurant was located in is still there and still in operation,
which is rare for any fast food restaurant as needs and technology have changed over
the decades, meaning most original locations simply can't handle the reality of serving
food in 2018.
That original restaurant is located inside a strip mall which makes it even more surprising
as strip malls seem to be more of a late 70's to early-to-mid 80's thing than a late 1950's
thing.
The first restaurant opened on May 8th, though the name has changed a bit, as has the original
menu (which included chicken, fish, shrimp and hot dogs).
At that original location stands a plaque that discusses how important it was to the
Ilitch family, the Detroit metropolitan area, and pizza lovers everywhere - but outside
of that and unlike other first locations, it's mostly business as usual, which as of
the day after the death of its founder had been running for over 21,000 days.
Pizza, Pizza indeed.
Little Caesar's Pizza Treat
As was alluded to in the previous entry, the original name of Little Caesar's wasn't Little
Caesars, at least not solely.
That's right, the original title was actually Little Caesar's Pizza Treat.
Quite the mouthful for a restaurant that takes pride in being blue collar, affordable, and
without frills.
The different name stemmed from one of the most important aspects of a successful marriage
and that's compromise - so when it came time to name their new restaurant the Ilitch's
had a difference in opinion on what to call it.
Marian wanted to name it 'Little Caesar's' whereas Mike wanted to name it 'Pizza Treat'
and so they decided to meet in the middle and call it 'Little Caesar's Pizza Treat'
and it's pretty safe to say that Marian had the better idea as 'Pizza Treat' just sounds
weird, like calling McDonald's 'Hamburgers Yum!'.
So where did the name "Little Caesar" come from?
As it turns out, that was the nickname of Marian Ilitch, although no one has ever really
explained exactly why that's her nickname or what it means, but considering the reputation
that Julius Caesar had and how he met his downfall, you'd have to think that it wasn't
a nickname that she was given out of love.
Despite his inability to think of a great name for his restaurant, at least Mike could
cook a decent pizza - at the time of his death, he was worth billions of dollars and the owner
of two successful sports franchises.
He would've also owned a third in the Detroit Lions if the NFL didn't have a rule against
owning teams in other leagues.
Speaking of which...
The Ilitch Sports Dynasty Started with Softball
It's safe to say that not only was Mike Ilitch a huge fan of sports, but also one of the
best owners - he won numerous championships throughout his years.
His first foray into owning a sports team was for a team called the Detroit Caesars,
which while a little on the nose was actually a team in the now-defunct American Professional
Slow Pitch Softball League.
The team began play in the 1977 season and was part of a sport that Little Caesar's had
heavily sponsored in and around Detroit that decade.
The team played at Memorial Field in East Detroit and had a few former pro baseball
players on their roster like former Detroit Tigers Jim Northrup and Norm Cash, as well
as some top-tier softball players like Mike Nye, Bert Smith, and Tex Collins.
The team was good, winning two World Series (of Softball) before they disbanded after
the 1979 season, and while some may consider that to be a failure, it did teach Ilitch
what owning a professional team was like - and was the beginning of a very lucrative career
as the owner of professional sports teams around Detroit.
Ilitch Owned the Detroit Red Wings and the Detroit Tigers
Ilitch moved on after the Detroit Caesar's ceased operation to one of the major four
sports: hockey, purchasing a Red Wings team that is now valued as one of the most expensive
franchises in the sport.
As a member of the original six teams alongside other teams like the Toronto Maple Leafs,
Boston Bruins, and Montreal Canadians, the Red Wings were a complete steal for Ilitch
who purchased the team for $8 million dollars from Bruce Norris before the 1982 season.
Considering that the most recent evaluation of the team is north of $600 million dollars,
it's safe to say that it was a sound investment.
That's not solely because of inflation, either, as Ilitch was able to take the team that was
known as the "Dead Wings" to one that was a perennial contender.
Ilitch soon found that owning one team wasn't enough and ended up purchasing the Detroit
Tigers in 1992 from another pizza magnate, Tom Monaghan, who founded Domino's Pizza.
This transition was a lot less smooth, as they had a losing record for twelve of his
first thirteen seasons as an owner.
He also expressed interest in purchasing the Detroit Pistons in 2010 in the hopes that
that'd keep the Pistons in Detroit and stop them from moving to another location (like
Seattle).
He even expressed interest in purchasing the Detroit Lions over the years but the NFL has
strict and confusing rules about their owners also owning other teams in different sports
so that never went beyond the vague interest phase.
The Little Caesars Logo
Perhaps outside of Domino's, with it's hyper-obvious and simple logo, there is no more recognizable
pizza chain logo than that of Little Caesar's, with its Roman Emperor taking a bite of pizza
while he holds up the rest of the pie on the end of a spear.
Some companies spend tens of millions on logos and branding.
Beyond that then comes the re-branding, which means pulling all old product off the shelves,
or in the case of a restaurant, basically creating new signage for each location, for
every delivery car or truck and also changing out all of the napkins and pizza boxes.
The most egregious example of this stemmed from the new Pepsi logo this century which
reportedly cost the soda giant upwards of a billion dollars - and when all was said
and done, it was basically just a rip off of Barack Obama's campaign logo.
So, it's actually pretty refreshing to hear that the Little Caesars logo was first drawn
on the back of a cocktail napkin, by Don Silverstein who was a friend of the Ilitch's.
He came up with the logo not long after the first restaurant opened in May of 1959 and
while it's become one of the most iconic in the entire restaurant industry, it couldn't
have cost the Ilitch couple more than whatever the cost of the bar tab was that night (and
hopefully every night for the rest of Silverstein's life).
Considering how creepy fast food logos were at the time (we're looking at you, Burger
King), it's actually surprising that the Little Caesar's logo turned out so well.
The Little Caesars HQ is Cutting Edge
Little Caesar's has always been considered on the forefront of Pizza cooking technological
advancements, and that progressive mindset is something that has clearly worked well
for them over the years, and doesn't stop solely at pizza.
For example, its international headquarters was recently opened and featured a lot of
first-of-a-kind technology.
The facade on the nine-story building was the first of its kind for any building wherein
the gigantic pieces of glass that form the facade are shaped like slices of pizza, and
that's clearly not an accident.
Each of the 14-foot tall pieces of glass is a technological marvel, and beyond the fact
that it points to the signature product of Little Caesar's, it also points to the fact
that Little Caesar's has been an innovator for long as it's been in business (which will
be sixty-years next May).
The idea is also that the facade will provide a ton of natural light, more collaboration
space, and amazing views of downtown Detroit.
The new facility will also have three times the amount of space for research and development
which while that sounds sort of funny for a pizza place, is actually a large part of
what all fast-food places do (as well as having state-of-the-art test kitchens, sensory panels,
and quality assurance operations at their headquarters).
Little Caesar's was the first to use a Conveyor Oven
If you go into basically any sandwich or pizza fast-food chain, you'll most likely see what
is called a conveyor oven, which is basically an oven that fits over a conveyor belt which
pulls the product through it at different speeds depending on how long each needs to
be cooked or toasted.
Considering how state of the art their headquarters is, it may not surprise you to hear that Little
Caesar's was essentially the first fast-food chain to fully embrace that technology, something
that Little Caesar's rolled out in 1997 and has a patent for.
That cuts down on the amount of time spent cooking each pizza
and also cuts down on the need for a single employee to stay at the oven and pull out
each pizza individually.
For anyone who has ever held that job, it's brutal as you're just as often getting burned
as you are over-or-under cooking pizzas.
It also cuts down on the amount of space needed for traditional ovens, instead opting for
a system that is a lot less bulky and expensive, something that is really important when your
profit margin is as thin as a place that sells pizzas for $5.
They say that competition breeds innovation, and in no other fast-food restaurant chain
is that more apparent than at Little Caesar's, especially considering it's most recent patent...
Little Caesars has Patented a Pizza Cooking Robot
A year or two ago there was a push by fast-food workers across the United States for a new
minimum wage increase to that of $15 dollars an hour.
For the first time in history, as opposed to stating that the increase would simply
amount to layoffs, the corporations behind those jobs like McDonald's instead warned
that the increase would mean that they'd move from human employees to automated ordering
stations, therefore cutting down on the amount of actual human people that they'd have in
their stores.
While that sounded crazy, the reality isn't that far off and the proof of it actually
stems from the patent that Little Caesar's received in March 2018.
That Patent was for an "automated apparatus provided for assembling pizza, which includes
a pizza sauce spreading station, a cheese spreading station, and a pepperoni applying
station" for a robot that will have an "articulating arm with a gripper attached to grab onto pizzas,
as well as a rotary dial system to ensure proper cheese and pepperoni distribution".
Little Caesar's is actually framing the robot as something that'll make the job of humans
in the restaurant better as it'd partially automate the "labor-intensive endeavor" of
pizza making, which frees workers up to perform "other value-added tasks" while improving
on efficiency and ensuring a more consistent product for the customers of Little Caesar's.
It's actually been said by those in the know that the future of labor will increasingly
have to deal with automation.
It definitely sounds a lot like the plot to the first Terminator, where Arnold's T-800
Terminator Robot travels back in time to murder Sarah Connor after her son, John Connor, failed
to tip him in the future for the pizza he delivered to his apartment.
I'll Be Back, In 30 Minutes or Less.
"Pizza, Pizza" Used to Mean "Pizza, Pizza"
There may be no more iconic catchphrase for a fast-food chain than "Pizza!
Pizza!", mainly because it's stood the test of time and isn't something that changes every
few years like McDonald's with its several catchphrases over the years.
It turns out that the "Pizza!
Pizza!"
started as a promotion that wasn't meant to last decades, and while the promotion itself
did end, the saying was so popular that the restaurant decided to continue using it as
it's general catchphrase.
That promotion was basically that you could come in with a coupon or proof of the cost
of a pizza from Pizza Hut or Domino's, and Little Caesar's would offer you not only one
pizza for the same price, but TWO pizzas for the price of one pizza elsewhere.
Meaning that if Pizza Hut was offering a large, two-topping pizza on special, you could go
to Little Caesar's with that ad and actually walk out with two two-topping pizza's.
With that context, it actually makes a lot of sense why their slogan is "Pizza, Pizza"
as you're receiving two pizzas.
This is, unfortunately, a situation where knowledge isn’t power - because now that
we know the catchphrase story, all we can do is sadly look back on the good old days
when you could walk out of Little Caesar's with two pizzas for the same price as one
pizza at Papa John's...
Although..
Considering the fact that you can still get a large pizza for $5 at Little Caesar's, it's
safe to assume you still can.
Which makes sense considering that you're paying for robots to construct your pizzas.
What’s your favorite pizza chain?
Let us know in the comments!
And be sure to click that subscribe button and hit that notification bell.
And since you’re here, check out some of our other great videos!