What the Triple Decker should have looked like {flickr}

Everyone remembers the delectable Stuffed Crust Pizza that increased Pizza Hut’s operating profit by over 30% in 1995, but does anyone remember the subsequent Triple Decker? If my memory serves me right, the Triple Decker is exactly as The Lard Letter’s apt description from 1996:

Semantics aside, let me state that the Triple Decker Pizza was a gross disappointment. The secret hidden cheese, when the pizza was hot, was slip-sliding around like molten magma beneath some really unstable tectonic plates, so you were very likely to take a bite with no cheese present in the secret pocket. This contributed to an overall feeling that this was not a super-cheesy pizza, but a super-crusty pizza. The Double Cruster is what they should have called it. It was a lot of work just to chew the thing, with my teeth and saliva protesting, “Bread… bread… bread… damn, this pizza’s got more bread than a motherf*****!”

At the time, Pizza Hut was looking for ways to regain a stronghold on its dine-in business and decided to throw two pizzas on top of one another. (Yes, it was basically 4 layers, but the marketing department ignored the upper cheese and topping layer). The Triple Decker was ultimately a failure but still deserves a place in the fad archives.

The innovative idea of two thin pizzas on top of each other will live on forever. Six types of cheese stuffed between two layers of dough and topped with traditional ingredients makes quite an impression. The press release was overly optimistic and claimed that Pizza Hut had learned from its mistakes with 1993’s Big Foot pizza:

TripleDecker, which has been in test in Portland, Ore., demonstrated substantial trial, Huston said. But trial alone is not enough to determine a product’s addition as a permanent menu item – as was proved by the chain’s mega-size Big Foot product.

“We learned a lot from Big Foot,” said Huston during a press conference to launch TripleDecker. “We can generate have to look at repeat and a product adoption rate to make sure consumers are hooked on a particular product.”

Big Foot first appeared in 1993 amid a multimillion-dollar product launch, and although the product generated significant sales, it never attained the frequency required to be deemed a success.

Somehow, Pizza Hut also felt that Triple Decker would surpass the Stuffed Crust (predicted to be a $1 billion dollar product) by the end of the year. It didn’t happen. Just goes to show that you can’t rely on Super Bowl advertising to launch a product. In the end qualitys triumph over hype.