# Pizza Hut new logo (2019)

> Pizza Hut launched a new logo in Jun 2019, designed by GSD&M. Jun 2019 (US): 2014 red-sauce-swirl roundel replaced by revived 1967, 99 red-roof logo with black slab type (GSD&M touch-up).

## Key facts

- Brand: Pizza Hut
- Launched: Jun 2019
- Studio: GSD&M
- What changed: Jun 2019 (US): 2014 red-sauce-swirl roundel replaced by revived 1967, 99 red-roof logo with black slab type (GSD&M touch-up).
- Why: Pizza Hut said its new creative had to reflect both the brand's legacy and where it was headed.
- Industry: Food & drink
- Logos: https://rebrandlog.com/logos/pizza-hut-2019/before.png (before), https://rebrandlog.com/logos/pizza-hut-2019/after.svg (after)

## The rebrand, explained

Pizza Hut's 2014 logo was a red roundel suggesting a swirl of sauce. Five years later, the chain decided it had lost sight of where it came from. In June 2019 it brought back the geometric red roof and heavy slab serif lettering it used between 1967 and 1999.

The return was built on research into its own past. Pizza Hut's internal marketing team spent two days with its agency of record, GSD&M, in the company archives at the Pizza Hut museum in Wichita, Kansas, going through old menus and recipe cards and reconnecting with icons such as checked tablecloths, red glass tumblers and Tiffany-style lamps.

Chief brand officer Marianne Radley told CNN the brand was engrained in customers' hearts and the creative had to reflect its legacy and where it was headed. The roof logo, used from 1967 to 1999, when Pizza Hut was the world's biggest pizza company, returned in TV ads and on packaging later in the year, used interchangeably with the red dot. It was not a major rebrand, Radley said, and no store remodels were planned. CNN noted that Domino's had overtaken Pizza Hut the year before.

The Drum reported that the company had been through five creative agencies in ten years and often trailed Domino's in the American pizza wars. The roof was meant to help it stand out in a crowded quick-service market.

Business Insider set the move against the scoreboard: Domino's had overtaken Pizza Hut in late 2018 as the leading pizza chain by global retail sales. Marianne Radley told the outlet the old logo recalled a period when Pizza Hut unequivocally reigned supreme, and that the company was kicking its confidence up a notch to be unapologetically Pizza Hut. The straight red roof over blocky lettering, used from 1967 to 1999, returned through a TV campaign, while the cartoonier 1999 mark, updated in 2014, stayed on storefronts. The outlet placed it alongside Burger King, Pepsi and Coca-Cola, all mining nostalgia for younger buyers.

Fast Company's headline said the old logo was back because it was awesome, and it is hard to argue. The sauce swirl was generic; the red roof is one of the great American restaurant marks, instantly tied to a building shape people remember. When the past is better than the present, using it is not nostalgia; it is just good judgement.

In short: The right call: the red roof was always better than what replaced it.

## Sources

- https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/25/business/pizza-hut-new-logo
- https://www.fastcompany.com/90367956/pizza-hut-resurrects-its-classic-logo-because-its-awesome/
- https://www.thedrum.com/news/pizza-hut-revives-og-branding-kickstart-growth-we-lost-sight-where-we-came

## Cite this

Rebrand Log, "Pizza Hut new logo (2019)", https://rebrandlog.com/rebrand/pizza-hut-2019/, last updated 2026-10-20.