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Jim Bitticks has become CEO of Dave's Hot Chicken as of January 2026, moving up from president and chief operating officer. He succeeds Bill Phelps, who now serves as executive chairman of the fast-growing fried chicken chain.
New Numerator data cited by Restaurant Business shows fast-food pizza chains now hold 45% of the $37 billion U.S. pizza market, up 3.1% since 2019, even as Papa Johns, Pizza Hut and Papa Murphy's closed hundreds of stores this year. Spending per restaurant visit rose 41% over the same period, with Domino's leading the category ahead of Little Caesars and Pizza Hut.
An updated franchise disclosure document shows Pizza Hut increased the pace of restaurant closures in the United States during 2025, with the list of shuttered locations continuing to grow into 2026. The filing comes as the chain is set to move toward operating independently of parent company Yum Brands.
Starting Monday, Domino's is pairing its Detroit-style 'the Domino' pizza with Minecraft Dungeons II promotions, including six collectible boxes featuring game characters like the Creeper and Valorie. Online buyers can unlock codes for in-game items such as a Domino's skin, a Slice Slayer Cape or a Cheesy Cube pet, and through Nov. 4 can enter to win one of 20,000 free downloads of the $30 game for PC or Xbox.
A group of Quad Cities investors has acquired Happy Joe's Pizza & Ice Cream's franchising company along with three company-owned restaurants in Iowa, financial terms undisclosed. The 54-year-old chain, founded in Davenport in 1972, once had about 100 locations but now operates 34 in the U.S. and six in Egypt after a 2022 bankruptcy filing. New president Carlos Araujo plans to focus first on food consistency, then menu updates and expanded birthday party offerings, along with better franchisee training and reporting.
Ed Bogan and his brother, new owners of Pizza King since 2020, oversee 66 restaurants primarily in Indiana, with one in Illinois. They emphasize the importance of delivering a uniform customer experience across all locations despite the geographic spread. The chain, founded in 1956, has a long-standing reputation that depends on each restaurant meeting customer expectations for food and service.
NPR's Planet Money traced the origins of the real-time order-tracking animation now common across delivery and service apps back to Domino's, which built the Pizza Tracker in the mid-2000s after dropping its 30-minute delivery guarantee. The tool launched before the 2006 Super Bowl and let customers watch their order's progress from placement to delivery. Design director Shuya Gong told NPR the pattern has since been adopted by companies like Uber and repair shops, and that she has designed similar trackers for banks and TurboTax.
CNET reviewed a low-cost sliding pizza peel, a wooden board fitted with a manual conveyor belt made of nonstick, fiberglass-like material rather than actual cloth. Instead of shoving a rigid peel entirely under a raw pizza, users only need to get the leading edge under the dough before pulling the conveyor toward themselves to load it, then reversing the motion to launch it into the oven.
Amazon has released Pizza Bot, an open-source tool under Apache 2.0 that organizes long-running AI agent tasks into an inbox-style interface. Completed tasks land in an 'Unread' queue while tasks needing human approval land in an 'Action' queue, letting users start work and check back later rather than watching agents run in real time.
Yum! Brands CFO Ranjith Roy told the Barclays Global Consumer Staples Conference that the recent sale of Pizza Hut shows the company is willing to make aggressive portfolio changes, including potentially adding a new brand if the opportunity fits. He noted the priority remains strengthening current holdings—Taco Bell, KFC and Habit Burger & Grill—before pursuing any acquisition.
Brian Bailey took a Domino's delivery job in his 20s to pay off student loans and became a store manager within 58 days. He bought his first franchise in Carlsbad, New Mexico, and has since expanded his company, Team Bailey, into the largest Domino's franchise operator in the U.S. with 160 stores across five states after acquiring 45 additional locations in Texas, Arkansas and Oklahoma in 2025.
A number of Domino's Pizza restaurants operated by an Ohio-based franchisee have suddenly shut down. The closures appear tied to the franchise operator's financial difficulties rather than a corporate decision by Domino's itself.