Dan Carney calls History channel show featuring Pizza Hut ‘horribly done’

Pizza Hut co-founder Dan Carney heard that the History channel’s “Food That Built America” was going to feature him and his late brother, Frank, in an episode Tuesday night, so he stayed up till 10 p.m. to watch from his winter home in Florida.

He had no problem with the idea for the episode, “Pizza Wars.”

“It was a great idea.”

However, he had a big problem with the execution.

“I think it was crappy myself,” Carney said.

“The facts . . . were so messed up,” he said. “All they had to do was use the telephone. I would have given them the facts.”

One of the biggest mistakes was that the episode, which featured re-creations with actors playing the Carney brothers, showed the two walking into the office of Domino’s Pizza founder Tom Monaghan to make an offer to buy that chain.

“Frank and I never approached Domino’s on buying out,” Carney said.

In fact, he never met Monaghan until more than two decades after selling Pizza Hut to PepsiCo. Carney said he doesn’t know of PepsiCo ever trying to buy Domino’s either.

“It served as a rather prejudiced ad for Domino’s,” Carney said.

“Guess who sponsored the program?”

He said there was at least one Domino’s ad that ran during the show.

No one with the History channel could immediately be reached for comment on Wednesday afternoon.

Carney also took issue with how he and his brother were portrayed.

“We look like Kansas yokels,” he said.

Carney has a master’s degree, and his brother was a college graduate, but they’re depicted less as educated businessmen and more as a couple of kids just giving the restaurant business a whirl.

“It’s somebody’s imagination.”

Carney said the only thing the show got right about how they created their first pizza recipe was the name of the man who helped them.

Otherwise, he said, there was “no reality.”

He said the show also failed to properly explain why they franchised their business, which was to raise capital.

“I couldn’t comprehend what they were talking about.”

Carney said he’s going to have to think about how he’ll formally respond to the show and “whether it’s worthwhile for me to do it or not.”

“What are they going to change? I don’t know.”

Though Carney said he’s “not looking to do some big lawsuit at age 89,” he is frustrated.

He said he and his wife “just sat there and shook our heads” as they watched — including to the end of the episode just to see what was said.

“It was just horribly done.”

This story was originally published February 10, 2021 at 2:47 PM.