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Little Caesars
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Little Caesar Enterprises, Inc. | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Type | Private |
| Founded | 1959 (Garden City, Michigan, USA) |
| Headquarters | Detroit, Michigan |
| Key people | Michael and Marian Ilitch, Founders and owners David Scrivano, President |
| Industry | Restaurants |
| Products | Pizza take-out |
| Slogan | Pizza! Pizza! (United States) various (Canada) |
| Website | www.littlecaesars.com |
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Little Caesars is a pizza restaurant chain in the United States. It is estimated to be the 4th largest pizza chain in the United States.[1] The company claims to be the largest carry-out pizza chain in the world.[2] It was founded by Mike Ilitch and Marian Ilitch in 1959 in Garden City, Michigan, as "Little Caesars Pizza Treat." The company is famous for its advertising catchphrase, "Pizza! Pizza!" which was introduced in 1979. The phrase refers to two pizzas being offered for the comparable price of a single pizza from competitors. Originally the pizzas were served in a single long package. Little Caesars has discarded the unwieldy packaging in favor of typical pizza boxes.
By 1987 [3] the company was operating across the Northern United States; by 2006 it was also present in parts of Canada (although some Canadian cities had locations since 1969), Puerto Rico, Guam, South Korea, Honduras, Slovakia [4], the Dominican Republic, Czech Republic [5], Mexico, Turkey, the Philippines, Ecuador, Egypt, Aruba, Iceland, Guatemala, Japan, Curacao, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, El Salvador, Qatar, Venezuela, UAE, Lebanon, and Bahrain.
Ilitch Holdings, Inc. provides professional and technical services to all companies owned by Michael and/or Marian Ilitch. These include the Detroit Tigers, Detroit Red Wings, Detroit's MotorCity Casino, Olympia Entertainment, a film theater company, a development company and the Hockeytown Cafe (also the site of City Theater) and Fox Theater in downtown Detroit.[6] In 2005, combined revenues of Ilitch-owned businesses totaled $1.5 billion.[7]
The company is looking to expand again, especially in the Northeast U.S. Currently, there are around 2,000 locations, down from a peak of around 5,000 in the 1990s.[8]. In particular, Little Caesar's wants to return to markets that the chain was forced to withdrawal from the late 1990's due to financial troubles such as Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, and Denver; Little Caesar's is currently nonexistent or in K-Mart locations in those markets.
In 2007, Little Caesars ended its partnership with Coca Cola, opting for Pepsi products instead.
Throughout the 1990s, Little Caesars was commonly found in Kmart stores. Coincidentally, the first Kmart and the first Little Caesars were both built in Garden City, Michigan. After Kmart's bankruptcy issues, most of today's Kmarts have replaced the Little Caesars with their own branded "K-Cafe". However, some Little Caesars still exist in Kmarts.
While Little Caesars owns the "Pizza! Pizza!" trademark in the U.S., the unaffiliated Pizza Pizza restaurant chain owns the Canadian trademark. As a result, Little Caesars cannot directly use its well-known slogan in Canada, but has used "Two Pizzas!" along with "Delivery! Delivery!", "Quality! Quality!" or other such double-word tag lines in advertising and on packaging in Canada. Little Caesars was among the first to use a new kind of speed cooking conveyor oven, the "Rotary Air Impingement Oven" as described in U.S. Patent 5676044
In 1998, Little Caesar's filled what was then the current largest pizza order; Current record: Little Caesar’s Enterprises and the VF Corporation. When: August 19, 1998. Record: Caesars filled an order of 13,386 pizzas from the VF Corporation of Greensboro, North Carolina, for 40,160 employees at 180 locations across the US to celebrate VF Day. As of October 14th, 2007, there is a pending new record: Papa John’s delivered 13,500 pizzas promptly at 11 a.m., June 8th at the General Dynamics NASSCO shipyard in San Diego. http://www.pmq.com/mag/200609/article.php?story=letterstotheeditor
- ^ Estimated by Technomic Inc., a food industry research firm in Chicago. Tom Wlash. "Little Caesars thinks huge - Detroit chain plans to add hundreds of stores nationwide", Detroit Free Press, March 21, 2006.
- ^ "Companies and Venues", Ilitch Holdings, Inc., July 18, 2006.
- ^ http://www.prnewswire.co.uk/cgi/news/release?id=12881
- ^ http://www.littlecaesars.sk
- ^ http://en.itesco.cz/en_cz/stores/praha/od_praha_narodni
- ^ Ilitch Holdings, Inc. [1] Accessed 16 June, 2006
- ^ Ilitch Holdings, Inc. [2] Accessed 16 June, 2006 (Number at bottom of page)
- ^ USA Today Little Caesars plans pizza empire Accessed 16 June, 2006