KTWU Sunflower Journeys 2002 - 1507B - The Pizza Hut
Produced by Amanda Shaw
Dan Carney: Well, my dad died when I was a junior in high school. He had always told me if you ever have a choice be in business for yourself, because you get the satisfaction that you know if you fail or you win, it's yours and you don't have somebody over you who's not giving you good opportunities to succeed. Narrator: Dan Carney never forgot his father's advice. The second of twelve children, Dan grew up working in the family grocery store. But it wasn't until 1957 when Dan was a graduate student at Wichita State University that he found a way to start a business of his own. Dan Carney: I'd been looking since I got out of the service for two and a half years to find something to be in business for myself. And I'm working at Carney's Market, and a lady comes in‹it's a landlady from the grocery store and a small beer joint that was right next door. She wanted to get rid of the beer joint, so she brought in an article from the Saturday Evening Post, spread it out and she said, 'Here's what you ought to do. You ought to go into the Pizza business.' This was an ideal thing. We jumped on it. Narrator: Dan and his brother Frank, also a college student, saw Pizza as the opportunity they'd been looking for. With a $500 loan from their mother, they remodeled the tavern next door to the family market. In 1958 pizza was a relatively new food for many Americans. In fact Dan and Frank Carney weren't even sure how to make a pizza. Dan Carney: Well, we had to find somebody who knew how to do it. And we found a serviceman, John Bender, who became an equal partner with my brother and I. And John had worked in a pizza place back in Indiana, and he was in the service so he came up with the recipe. And we modified the recipe a little bit and took off with it. Narrator: Then there was the name for
their new restaurant‹a decision made simpler since the Carney brother sign
had room for only nine characters. It was like the right time and the right place. We did an excellent business. We opened a second store within probably four or five months after that, with a small carry out, and we had five stores within about a year and a half. Narrator: Riding the vehicle of the franchise system, Pizza Hut boomed. At the peak of expansion Frank and Dan Carney were launching a new restaurant every day. Don Hackett: They found there was a distribution system which worked. They didn't invent it, but they found one that worked. And in every entrepreneurship case, they get something else that's really difficult for the rest of us. They stepped out and did something about it. See a lot of people had already identified franchising as neat. But there were few at that time who would step out and embrace it and borrow money to attempt to exploit it. Narrator: The Carney brothers went public with Pizza Hut in 1969. In 1977, they sold their franchise rights to the Pepsico Company. Today Pizza Hut reigns as the world's largest pizza chain. Dan Carney: I still eat Pizza Hut Pizza. But they don't have it on the menu any more. I guess my favorite Pizza was pepperoni and anchovies. Throwing out a big seller. Narrator: Frank Carney stayed on with Pizza Hut for a number of years, eventually joining the competition as a franchiser for Papa Johns Pizza. But for Dan Carney, the time was right to move on. Dan Carney: I think I'm an entrepreneur. I enjoy building things up or trying to build them up, and once it becomes old hat, large business, I don't like it either from the top or from the bottom. It's not fun. So, no, I thought it was ideal for me that I could turn around and sell and walk away. Narrator: One thing Dan Carney never did was finish his master's degree in business. He was just three credit hours shy of graduating, when he and a professor came to an impasse. Don Hackett: He wanted to write a thesis on franchising. And one of our forward-leaning profs indicated that was really not a viable topic and wanted him to write it on something else. Dan Carney: The doctor at time told me, "No, I want you to write on collective bargaining. Franchising is not part of the current thing. It's much more important for you to do collective bargaining," which to me was a very dull subject. Don Hackett: That's a lot of what these guys are about. They want it applied, they have a vision, and when education fails to respond to that, well then, they are going to chase their vision. Dan Carney: I went back probably six or seven years later, and I said, 'You know, I'd like to complete this. If there's a way to do it.' And they said, 'Why would you want to do that. You could teach the course.' Narrator: He didn't teach any courses, but in 1977 Dan Carney did serve on the advisory council that helped found Wichita State's Center for Entrepreneurship, one of the first of its kind in the country. The program caters to students who are looking for an alternative to the traditional business degree. Don Hackett: If you look at the most famous entrepreneurs out of Wichita, most of them didn't graduate from college. And it was because they had an urgency to go do it, and you see that in our majors. We hope that for our entrepreneurship majors, we are able to be more responsive than maybe what had happened 30 years ago or so. Narrator: The original Pizza Hut building was relocated to the campus of Wichita State University. It now serves as a meeting place for students as well as an inspiration for all aspiring entrepreneurs. Don Hackett: There's been this wonderful culture of entrepreneurship that has developed here, which excites a lot of people and certainly excites a lot of our students. Dan Carney: There are new
ideas coming all the time. And new ideas, when they come in, they usually have a
very large margin and a very good profit. So if you can find out one of these
ideas and start with it, then you can prosper, and you can prosper much faster
today, because of communication, than you were able to when I was there. So yes,
I think small business is still the backbone of the country. This transcript is from KTWU's Sunflower Journeys 2002 season. A production
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