Originally published 2019-11-05.
On 23 October 2019 a single Pizza Hut restaurant in Phoenix, Arizona, tried out two new ideas at once: a pizza topped with plant-based Italian sausage, and a round, plant-fibre box to carry it in. The Garden Specialty Pizza sold for $10, in-store only and while supplies lasted, and the money raised from the one-day event went to a local sustainability group.
It was a tiny test, but it came at a moment when nearly every big fast-food chain was experimenting with meat alternatives and greener packaging. Here is what was on the pizza, how the round box worked, who made both, and what the experiment tells us about the wider trend.
What was on the pizza
The Garden Specialty Pizza was built on Pizza Hut's large hand-tossed crust. Its star ingredient was Incogmeato Italian sausage from MorningStar Farms, the vegetarian brand then owned by Kellogg's. The rest of the toppings were onions, mushrooms and banana peppers.
It is worth being clear about what "plant-based" meant here. Only the sausage was described as plant-based. None of the announcements called the pizza vegan, and it was made in a regular kitchen that handles meat, dairy and other common allergens. Anyone with strict dietary needs would have had to check the details with the restaurant.
Kellogg's described the partnership as an attempt to create a plant-based pizza for "flexitarians", people who still eat meat but are trying to eat less of it. That group, rather than committed vegans, was the main target of most fast-food plant-based launches in 2019.
Why a round box?
Pizzas are round, but for decades they have travelled in square cardboard boxes, mostly because flat sheets of corrugated board are cheap and easy to fold. The box Pizza Hut tested was different in several ways:
- It was moulded from sustainably harvested plant fibre with a smooth finish, rather than folded from corrugated cardboard.
- It used less material overall than a typical square box.
- It was described as industrially compostable, which means it can break down in commercial composting facilities where they exist, though not necessarily in a back-garden compost heap.
- The lid interlocked with the base in a clamshell style, which Pizza Hut said made delivery smoother and helped keep pizzas hotter and crisper.
Pizza Hut called it the result of a two-year development effort and the most innovative packaging it had tried. A round box also takes up less awkward space in the fridge, a small but real perk for anyone saving leftovers.
Pizza Hut is testing plant-based “Incogmeato” sausage toppings and round boxes https://t.co/uIuCn6LOUV pic.twitter.com/doMkcxPOR2
— The Verge (@verge) October 22, 2019
The companies behind the test
The box was designed with Zume, a California company founded in 2015 as Zume Pizza. Zume first became known for robot-assisted pizza making and delivery vans with ovens inside, which cooked pizzas on the way to customers. By 2019 it was shifting toward sustainable food packaging and had bought Pivot, a plant-based packaging maker with a large factory in Southern California.
That pivot did not save the company. Zume laid off hundreds of staff in 2020, closed its robotics and delivery operations and eventually shut down in June 2023, a reminder that a promising packaging idea and a sustainable business are not the same thing.
MorningStar Farms, the maker of the sausage, had launched its Incogmeato line in 2019 to compete with Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods.
Part of a wider plant-based push
Pizza Hut's test did not happen in isolation. In 2019 plant-based meat was one of the hottest topics in fast food. Pizza Hut's sister brand KFC, also owned by Yum! Brands, had tested Beyond Fried Chicken at a single Atlanta restaurant only two months earlier; the plant-based nuggets and boneless wings sold out in under five hours. Other chains were adding plant-based burgers to their menus across the country.
One-day, one-location events like these let a chain measure demand, gather press coverage and test kitchen procedures before committing to a national launch. Pizza Hut said that after Phoenix it would look at ways to roll out the round box more widely. Neither the Garden Specialty Pizza nor the round box appears to have become a permanent fixture, and Pizza Hut reportedly went on to try other plant-based toppings with different suppliers.
Did it matter for the environment?
The two innovations target different environmental problems. Replacing some meat with plant protein generally means lower greenhouse-gas emissions and land use per serving, which is why many climate researchers encourage eating less meat, especially beef. Sausage is usually made from pork, which has a smaller footprint than beef but still more than most plant foods.
Packaging is a trickier story. Traditional pizza boxes are made from cardboard that is often recyclable, but grease and cheese stains can complicate that, and rules vary between local recycling schemes. A compostable box avoids that problem only if it actually reaches a commercial composting facility, which many towns do not have. In practice, the biggest gains usually come from simply using less material, which the round box did.
A single one-day test in Phoenix obviously did not change the industry. What it did show is that big chains were willing to rethink even something as familiar as the pizza box.
How the test day worked
The event took place on Wednesday 23 October 2019 at the Pizza Hut restaurant at 3602 East Thomas Road in Phoenix. Customers paid $10 for the pizza in its new round box, with the green Pizza Hut roof logo on top. It was available in-store only, with no delivery, while stocks lasted. Proceeds were donated to Arizona Forward, a Phoenix-based nonprofit focused on sustainability and environmental quality in the state.
What to take from it
If you are looking for a plant-based option at a pizza chain today, the Garden Specialty Pizza from this test is no longer on offer, so check your local menu and ask about cheese and allergens if you are vegan or have allergies. The bigger lesson is about direction: fast-food companies now routinely test meat alternatives and lighter packaging, and small trials like this one are how those ideas get tried out before they reach millions of customers.
Sources: Nation's Restaurant News: Pizza Hut testing plant-based sausage served in Zume round box; Packaging Insights: Pizza Hut trials circular plant-based pizza boxes; Zume (Wikipedia); video and tweet embeds from Pizza Hut and The Verge.
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