4 Once-Favorite Pizza Chains in America That Went Out of Business
According to Statista, the number of pizza restaurants in the U.S. pizza restaurant sales exceeded 45 billion U.S. dollars in 2021, however, the number of pizza restaurants throughout the country fell by nearly three thousand last year. This means that, while some pizza spots thrived, others experienced the ongoing sting left over by the pandemic and had to deal with inflation and supply chain issues.
America's endless hunger for pizza has seen the rise and fall of plenty of chains over the years. While some chains are growing so rapidly that they're planning hundreds of new locations, others have been less fortunate. Whether dining out or ordering in, the dining public in the U.S. is a fickle bunch, with ever-changing palates and preferences.
Just as certain steakhouses have fallen out of favor in recent years, the same unfortunate fate has befallen a few once-beloved pizza chains. Along with struggling chains like Cici's and California Pizza Kitchen, both of which have made moves to stay relevant this year, here are four American pizza titans that have gone out of business forever.
Pizza Haven
One of the progenitors of the pizza delivery era, Pizza Haven is now but a bygone relic for pepperoni lovers in the Pacific Northwest. The chain originated in Seattle in 1958, operating as a once-revolutionary dial-a-pizza format that made it one of the first on the market for such a brand. At its height, Pizza Haven had 42 locations in the Pacific Northwest and California, but its days were numbered as it became a casualty of the 1990s' pizza delivery wars.
As mammoth companies like Pizza Hut and Domino's emerged, Pizza Haven couldn't keep up, eventually going the way of Blockbuster Video and filing for bankruptcy in the late '90s, before disappearing entirely.
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ShowBiz Pizza Place
A pizza place with games, rides, and creepy animatronics—sound familiar? If you guessed Chuck E. Cheese, you might be surprised to learn that there was actually another oddly similar concept that predated the rodent-themed pizza playpen. The concept was called ShowBiz Pizza Place, a kid-centric eatery that served pizza with a side of shenanigans.
Initially opened in Kansas City in 1980, ShowBiz featured an animatronic stage show called Rock-afire Explosion, starring a hillbilly bear called Billy Bon, a musical gorilla, and a spirited mouse.
Unsurprisingly, there really is only room for one animatronic pizza place, so when Chuck E. Cheese became the de facto brand for ball pits and pizza, it eventually took over ShowBiz and converted all locations by 1992, leaving the brand's origins in the 1980s dust. Of course, the fact that Chuck E. Cheese has gone through bankruptcy and resorted to selling frozen pizza is not exactly the pinnacle of success either, so only time will tell how much longer America will have a pizza place with animatronic critters.
Happy Joe's Pizza
While not totally gone, the future looks iffy for a Midwestern pizza chain that's taken a big hit in recent years. Whereas Happy Joe's once boasted 42 locations across Minnesota, Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, North Dakota, and Wisconsin, its parent company Dynamic Restaurant Holdings filed for bankruptcy—resulting in the imminent shuttering of numerous company-owned locations.
Unlike Pizza Haven and ShowBiz, however, there's still hope for Happy Joe's. The bankruptcy, brought on by woes of the pandemic and suffocating competition, didn't affect franchised locations, which still account for a bulk of its units. So while Dynamic couldn't endure its $5.3 million debt, the brand lives on to fight another day.
Pizza Cucinova
While nowhere near as prolific as Pizza Haven, and but a blip on the radar compared to omnipresent entities like Domino's, Pizza Cucinova was an Ohio-based mini-chain with a loyal following that seems to have vanished overnight. Without any formal announcement or acknowledgment (its website no longer works, and its last Instagram post was in 2019), all five locations were shut down, giving artisan pizza-loving Ohioans no time to grieve.
The lifespan of the company was short. It first opened in 2013, before growing to a handful of outposts—some of which never returned after the initial pandemic-induced closures. The chain was owned by Florida-based Vivaria Group, which bought Pizza Cucinova from Sbarro—a chain notorious for its own struggles—which certainly speaks volumes about its chances in a pizza-saturated market.
A previous version of this article was originally published in August 2022.
