Hot Dog Pizza Bites: Pizza Hut Launches New Menu Item in US Restaurants

Pizza Hut is launching Hot Dog Pizza Bites on June 18 at its 6,300 US restaurants in a move to boost the chain’s sales.

Hot Dog Pizza Bites features 28 “premium hot dog bites,” which are baked into the crust and meant to be pulled off and dipped in mustard.

Pizza Hut, which is owned by Yum! Brands Inc., is still contending with sluggish sales and hopes the new item will help draw customers.

Yum CEO Greg Creed has said he isn’t happy with how the pizza chain has performed since it debuted a new menu last year. In the most recent quarter, Pizza Hut’s same-store sales were little changed from a year earlier. Greg Creed said the chain hadn’t been effective with its marketing and that it may have lost sight of “mainstream pizza customers” in favor of chasing millennials.

Pizza Hut has about 1.5 million of the new pies available and will sell them until July 11, or until supplies last.

The chain, which first introduced a pizza made with crust stuffed with hot dogs in some Asian markets in 2011, has sold it at restaurants in the UK, Thailand, Australia, Canada and the Middle East. In earlier versions, the hot dogs were hidden inside the crust, running lengthwise.

The updated US design has the hot dogs peeking out of pretzel-style bites, which form the outer crust.

Pizza Hut spokesman Doug Terfehr said: “Our US fans have been asking for it ever since they saw it pop up around the world.

“We wanted to do it in a way that matched what the consumer would expect from these products, which they definitely love on their own.”