"Hut?"

By Alex Allen

aaa

Pizza Hut have been pushing their luck with me a bit recently. You see, it turns out that serving food that gives people heart attacks isn't good. It's generally considered to be bad press, the whole 'all publicity is good publicity' thing doesn't really ring true here. People don't want a side order of death with their stuffed crust. It's pretty hard to factor the Hut in to a balanced diet when you consider that just one slice of a 172g stuffed crust Italian Sausage pizza has 478 calories, and 23g of fat. That's ridiculous, there's a serious case for that replacing lethal injection. So now, Pizza Hut have decided to focus on pasta instead and have come up with the most cringe worthy, hideous advertising campaign I've ever seen. Three women drop their kids off at school, and then get on the phone to each other before each coming out with 'hut?' and eventually end up at Pizza Hut, wolfing down their delicious pasta before all hilariously blurting out, 'can I try yours!?' Oh please, have mine, all of it, it's disgusting. Look at the advert, that's the best that their pasta is going to look. It can't possibly look any better than that, that food has had camera crews and design teams going over it to make it look perfect, and guess what? It still looks like shit! Who would pay £10 for that?

ddd

And let's also recap how they got to Pizza Hut in the first place, the excited, unanimous decision. Please! I've been there, and it always starts the same way. One person privately thinks they wouldn't mind going to Pizza Hut, but they don't voice it for one reason. Shame and embarrassment. They hope, secretly, that someone else will suggest it and they can just go along with the crowd, because, you see, Pizza Hut is for pigs. If you go there, you are admitting that you want to eat until you feel sick. You know this, because Pizza Express always elect to build a new restaurant opposite every Pizza Hut, so the commoners (that's you) can see what a nice time all the civilized people are having opposite them, and feel some kind of aspirational sense of wanting to better their pizza eating environment. Don't try and market it as an actual, credible place for people to dine! It was never that! It's for hungry poor people to binge. Real restaurants don't give you a doggy bag for your leftover food, they just don't! That's not how civilised people live! How many other restaurants have you been to, where hoards of diners gather around a central heated table, waiting for any pizza to turn up so they can fill their plate with it? How many salads have you had that are covered in 'bacon bits'? It's a nonsense! But people aren't stupid (well some are), they know this! They know what they're doing is disgusting, and when there's a queue outside during school holidays, some people realise that they can't be seen queueing at Pizza Hut in broad daylight and move along. Still, that is what it is! I love the way that Pizza Hut are just now cottoning on to the fact that pasta is popular, as if nobody else has tried it yet. 'Feeling down about the recession? Lost your job? Why not come in for some delicious pasta?' We know what pasta is! More to the point, my financial problems aren't going to be rectified by a combination of flour, water and tomato sauce. I think these people should stick to their main target audience, fat people. Fat people, and their slightly ashamed girlfriends (walk past on Valentines Day, you'll see what I mean), it's all they know.