Postcards from the Funny Farm

Around 1990, most every strip-mall-concept “Winchells” donuts mysteriously disappeared from Orange County. You might think this was good for all of our arteries. Of course I was 20 at the time so arteries weren’t really a concern. Again, you might say this phenomenon was healthy for us Orange County (OC) folk, but a real estate transaction with a pizza racket called “Pizza Hut” just challenged our collective vascular system further. In an unprecedented and mammoth OC industrial purchase, Pizza Hut purchased most all strip mall Winchells and uniformly transformed them into an exciting NEW (yes, then it was new folks) restaurant concept of “Delivery/Carryout” only. There were many innovations, some based on another budding enterprise called “Dominos Pizza: 30 minutes or it’s free.” But the most significant was the chain mail conveyer belt oven. This cooked pizzas beginning to end in 7 minutes. With a make-table time of 1-2 minutes, this “theoretically” would make the 30 minute promise time a piece of cake, or pie if you willl.

The yellow signs that once lured us in for sugar, flour and cholesterol became red ones that drew us to our phones like starved zombies. Instead of “brains brains . . .” it was “Large Pan Pepperoni and a 2 liter.” This transaction and subsequent pizza delivery behemoth of Pizza Hut (corporately based locally in Irvine, CA) is a signature business model of the OC. Think big, plan big, buy big, roll big. That might have been a better slogan than “Makin’ it great.”

I took a job as a delivery driver at Pizza Hut #709485 in Mission Viejo, CA in August of 1990 when I was 20. I can recall hearing significant events announced on the radio while delivering such as: “The LA Riots re: the Rodney King beating” (this still beats all Super Bowl records for delivery dollars) and Kurt Cobain’s suicide. When something was happening in a family or a culture, the OC ordered pizza. Pizza Hut leadership had the vision to see what yeast, flower, tomatoes, and cheese could do to change the world . . . and its cholesterol numbers.

I worked as a driver for a couple years while playing nights as singer/songwriter/guitarist in my rock band. After 2 years of not achieving my rock star dreams, I went back to school at Saddleback College. My AA came in 1993, then I transferred to California State University Fullerton where I earned my BA in English in 1995 and my MA in English with emphases in “Language, Writing, and Rhetoric” in 1998. Alongside my schooling I continued at Pizza Hut for what would become a 7 year “transition” job. After starting work in the academic realm in 1997, I later returned to try my hand at restaurant management running the Dana Point, CA Pizza Hut for 2 1/2 years (#705489). There’s nothing much you can tell me I don’t know about the company or about pizza for that matter :) I learned the “bonus” business wasn’t my bag. Now after being in teaching a collective 8 going on 9 years, I know my calling is outside the “Hut,” but I remember it fondly. In many ways, working there made me who I am today.

The OC is full of entrepreneurial endeavors. Sometimes they work, sometimes they flop. When it comes to OC businesses, change is the only constant: dollars to donuts to pizza dough. Take it from someone who was born and raised there for 33 years, you can place a bet on that business model continuing ad-infinitum.