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Looking at Pizza Hut today, it's hard to believe that the company's Wichita founders created the pizza giant almost by chance.
But that explains how Pizza Hut got its start.
In 1958, brothers Frank and Dan Carney did not have any grand plan to build a fast-food empire.
The Pizza Hut co-founders were largely acting on the suggestion of the property owners where their parent's grocery store was located.
Frank Carney said the owners, Maude Beech and Molly Monahan, didn't feel B & B Lunch, a 600-square-foot bar and eatery located on the block of real estate at Bluff and Kellogg, was compatible with their restaurant, Elizabeth's.
When B&Bs lease expired, the owners did not renew it and approached the Carney brothers about opening a pizza restaurant in B&B's now vacated space. Pizza was not a big favorite in Wichita in the 1950s, said Dan Carney. He said he was aware of only two Italian restaurants in town that were serving it.
And it was a menu item that the Carneys didn't know a lot about.
"Neither one of us knew how to make pizza," Frank Carney said. "But we agreed to do it a week before we got it open."
Obviously, the Carneys' first task was to learn how to make pizza, or find someone who could.
That's when they met John Bender,...