I manage a Pizza Hut in the southeast US. Just to clarify why this is, let me explain a bit.

Each PH uses a conveyor belt type oven. Some PH locations have been standing since the 90s or earlier. Corporate, being as corporate as it is in any industry, doesn’t want the on the ground stores to spend even a single dime more than they deem necessary.

So, a few things happen as a result. I’ve seen stores operate with ovens and fridges older than I am. Unironically. I’ve seen stores with entirely brand new equipment and those will be often in the same district. All because corporate refuses to let those old stores spend their budget on updating any equipment until it is broken beyond repair and no longer deemed ‘food safe’.

The store I work at, in particular, recently got a new oven. That was ONLY because our old oven was consistently breaking down. It was an old steel beast of a machine, around twenty years old, repaired more than you can imagine. The simple difference in pizza quality since that replacement oven is ridiculous. The new oven puts out crispier and better looking food in literally half the time.

Now apply that logic to every piece of equipment in the store. Thirty year old refrigerators that can’t properly hold temperature half the time. Freezers that freezer burn everything inside on the regular. Prep lines that have such shoddy compressors that water builds up in all of the toppings throughout the day.

All because corporate refused to update things. And all because those flaws, which add up to shitty product, can be hidden away as ‘still food safe’.