National Pizza Day was Feb. 9, but if there’s anything #FlashbackFriday doesn’t mind celebrating late—or early, or whenever—it’s pizza. So we travel back to 1958, when the now-ubiquitous pies were still a novelty in much of America, but threatening to usurp the hot dog in popularity.
A June 1958 Exchange Post story headline “Pizza Pushing Hot Dog in Popularity Battle; Sudden Rise Due to Serviceman Acceptance” began, “According to an item in a recent issue of a trade magazine, there a war brewing that has international ramifications. This culinary calamity is an outgrowth of a statement by certain cheese interests that an old delicacy of Italian origin has replaced the hot dog as America’s most popular fast food item.”
Hot dog enthusiasts, the story said, weren’t just rolling over for this competitive kick in the buns. “ The frankfurter interests have countered by militantly proclaiming that the frank can still flatten pizza (pronounced peetzuh) in a popularity fight.” Yes, pizza was at one time novel enough that the Exchange Post told readers how to say “pizza.”
In 1958, pizza wasn’t that new to America. The military community, especially the Navy and Marine Corps, had helped lead a surge of pizza popularity during the previous five years. The Army and Air Force were less responsible for the growth, according the story, but they still delivered their own slices of the popularity pie.
And domestically, Exchange pizza sales were estimated at 3,000 a week. But they were higher in certain military communities.
“This may seem like of melted cheese and tomatoes until you digest the fact that one Navy exchange and one Marine Corps exchange do a combined total of 60,000 pies a month,” the Exchange Post reported. “Of course these two exchanges—one at Norfolk Naval Base and one at Camp Lejeune—have comparatively large troop strengths.”
But the Exchange held its own. Captain Heber J. Crook Jr., Exchange officer at Shaw AFB in South Carolina told the Exchange Post: “The pizza operation has proven highly satisfactory in our cafeteria. We sell from 350 to 400 pies weekly.”
The story points out that five years earlier, pizza was relatively known on a national scale, except in Italian-American communities. But diners caught on fast: “From a customer standpoint, pizza seems to go well with a beer or as a quick snack between or after meals. It has a unique and distinctive character that appears to have a hypnotic effect on our national taste buds.”
Pizza would become much bigger at the Exchange, which opened its first brand-name pizza restaurant, Pizza Inn, at Fort Carson in 1986. A year later, the Exchange got deeper into the pizza biz with its own direct-run restaurant, Anthony’s Pizza, debuting at Fort Bliss.
Today, the Exchange still operates Anthony’s at some Pacific Region installations, as well as Domino’s, Hunt Bros., Papa John’s and Pizza Hut at various Exchange locations worldwide.
SOURCE: Exchange Post archives.
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