The 8 Most Hated Pizza Chains in America

A recent poll found that the average American eats enough pizza slices per year to fill up a full-sized suitcase — roughly 180 slices. Naturally, this makes them very “equipped” and strongly opinionated about their ’za, debating endlessly over the best pizza style: New York slice, deep dish, crust or no crust, and so on.

While people can’t agree on the best pizza, scroll through enough Reddit threads and polls, and it’s clear they can agree on the worst. Here are the 8 pizza chains with the most complaints. 

For years, Little Caesars' biggest — and maybe only — selling point was its price: the $5 Hot-N-Ready pizza. But then again, the price is sneakingly creeping up, and the pizza continues to be more like “lukewarm and eventually on its way out.” So, nobody is shocked that Little Caesars is often the first name dropped when someone mentions the worst pizza in America. 

In 2021, a poll by Mashed found that 27% of respondents chose Little Caesars as the worst pizza chain. It’s the recurring champ in every discussion about bad pizza. “It looks like pizza, says it’s pizza, but it tastes like cardboard,” one customer summed it up. “Little Caesars mixes their sauce with grease water. Absolutely disgusting,” another added.

We’ll say it is probably kind of okay if you’ve never tried a slice of pizza in your life, but if you have standards, ring on a different door.

While Papa John’s isn’t universally hated as the worst thing to call itself pizza, it’s often described as the Bud Light of food — it’s there, it does nothing for you, but you’ll eat it. In the same Mashed poll, it earned the title of second-worst pizza, with 17% saying they’d rather pass. Longtime pizza fans mostly gripe about how the quality has nosedived, saying Papa John’s isn’t what it used to be in the ’80s and ’90s. 

When your target audience eats Playdoh, attention to pizza quality probably isn't a priority. That’s why Chuck E. Cheese Pizza thrives in the land of underdeveloped palates. Eventually, though, you hit an age where you realize two things: animatronic rodents are creepy, and Chuck E. Cheese pizza is inedible garbage. Anyone who’s ever had a decent slice would need more than stale bread, processed tomato paste, and imitation cheese to be impressed. 

Surprisingly, poor taste isn’t even the most common complaint about Chuck E. Cheese pizza. There was a conspiracy theory— investigated in detail by YouTuber Shane Dawson— that claims the Fat Mouse allegedly recycles leftover slices into new Frankenstein-esque germ-covered pizzas. 

Yes, it’s devastating to see your childhood favorite on the list of most demonized pizza chains, but people have had it with the overpriced, grease-filled pie. Many former fans of one of the largest chains in America swear that something has changed, and the quality went downhill a long time ago, while the chain started charging for everything that was once free. 

"I'm sorry, I've tried giving Pizza Hut so many chances, but everytime I order it's always like 15$+ for a large one topping pizza that ends up being mid," wrote one Redditor. “I can’t remember the last time I’ve had such a dull, soulless, cardboard-tasting pizza,” said a Redditor in a thread asking what happened to the pizza we all once loved. “I feel sorry for the people today who will never know what an original pan pizza from Pizza Hut is supposed to taste like," added another.

It seems contradictory that the largest pizza chain in the world in terms of sales and locations would also be one people dislike the most. However, according to many Reddit polls and discussions, Domino’s is not meeting expectations. 

 One of the biggest culprits behind the criticism Domino’s receives is the dubious ingredients they use, the cardboard-like taste, the overpriced pizzas, the very suspicious low-graded beef, “the sour-ish unfresh tasting tomato sauce that pretty much overwhelms all other flavors, the soggy dough, and the list goes on. 

"It’s a good pizza for people who don’t like pizza" is a popular opinion among customers, second only to “It’s disgusting.”

You can’t have too much of a good thing, which obviously applies to “mediocre to bad” when it comes to America’s love of quantity over quality. That’s why Cici's has survived for nearly four decades serving subpar pizza — because for $8, all-you-can-eat “just okay” pizza is good enough for many. But plenty of people have hit their limit, with Redditors calling it “downright disgusting.” Still, some argue it’s fine if you just want to eat until you can’t anymore. 

You have to give this one to Papa Murphy’s — it’s the ultimate gaslighting pizza chain: If you don’t like it, well, that’s on you, you baked it yourself. The whole “take-and-bake” concept doesn’t click with everyone. “You walk into a pizza place to buy a nice, perfectly made, baked to perfection pizza, but if you go to Papa Murphy's they just give you a sub-par pizza that you have to take home and cook yourself. With different oven temperatures this just messes the pizza up a lot of the time, “ a Redditor complained.

In a 2014 Consumer Reports survey, Sbarro ranked dead last out of 65 fast-food chains, with many people pointing to its lack of freshness and poor value. Which is not a surprise, Sbarro has closed more than 100 across the U.S. in the past decade. One of the most common complaints is how greasy the slices are.