Cheapism / Nicole M./Yelp / Krizia M./Yelp / Mel E./Yelp
The average American eats 180 slices of pizza each year. Some of them are bound to be terrible. We shouldn't have to put up with a soggy crust, burnt pepperoni, and cheese that tastes like cardboard, but we've all eaten terrible pizza before.
There are ways to avoid that unfortunate fate, though. If you're looking for a primo pizza for your next party or Friday movie night, it's probably best to avoid these national pizza chains.
Just when you think this chain must be dead, you walk through the mall food court and boom!, there it is. Literally no one has ever thought, "Oh, we should get a pizza from Sbarro tonight." The chain must survive on being the only available option open at the airport in the middle of the night.
When you do find a location, the pizzas are all sitting out on the counter. How long have they been there? Are the heat lamps keeping the flies away? Will the dried out crust break your teeth? It's best to keep walking to that random Cajun/Chinese fusion place.
Papa Johns still exists because of two things, and neither of them are pizza: garlic sauce and pepperoncini peppers. We all know that you absolutely need those two extras in order to make Papa Johns' pizza remotely edible.
The other thing that the chain is best known for? Controversy. Sure, the namesake John is now gone from the company, but unless you have great pizza, it's hard to really come back after that. The pizza just doesn't cut it.
Cicis sells whole pizzas to go, but come on, no one goes there for that. It's the endless pizza buffet that gets people in the door, but why is anyone's guess. The promise of a pizza buffet is great, but the only people who seem to leave happy are the teenage athletes who don't normally get to eat as much as they want at home. Once those pizzas have been sitting on the buffet line for 20 minutes, they turn into something indistinguishable from cardboard. Plus, it's so cheap that you know the ingredients suck.
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Remember when Chuck E. Cheese tried to get people to order pizza during the pandemic by calling themselves Pasqually's on delivery apps? They had to trick people into ordering them. Without a restaurant full of screaming, snot-nosed children running around, no one would ever dare to order their pizza. If we can't get our crappy pizza with a side of fever dream animatronics, then what is the point?
The days when Pizza Hut was actually good are long over. We believe the chain is surviving on nostalgia alone at this point. This was the first great pizza buffet, and it was perfect for a special family dinner. Now, the pizzas are just round sponges sopping wet with oil. The place you'd be most likely to eat Pizza Hut at this point might actually be the airport, since absolutely no one would ever crave this pizza. How the mighty have fallen.
Related: These 9 Fast-Food Chains Are the Biggest Ripoffs, According to Reddit
The one thing that we'll give Little Caesars credit for it is that it doesn't pretend to be anything it's not. The pizzas are somehow still only $6, and if you're lucky, you'll get it "hot 'n ready." Not hot and tasty, or good and ready. It'll just be the bare minimum to qualify as edible pizza, with extra grease for good measure. You'll be thrilled about spending so little money on pizza, but your body is not going to like it.
Related: 20 Beloved Local Pizza Chains the Rest of the Country Needs
