People Are Ordering Smaller Pizzas and Fewer Toppings. What Does That Tell Us?

[dalton99a]

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/01/business/consumers-pizza-sales.html

https://archive.ph/bxOqm

People Are Ordering Smaller Pizzas and Fewer Toppings. What Does That Tell Us?
Sales are softening at big chains and independent shops aren’t selling as many extras. Competition, diet trends and consumer anxiety may all be playing a part.
By Julie Creswell
Dec. 1, 2025

For much of this year, business at Prima Pizza Kitchen in Somerville, N.J., was booming.

On most Fridays, as many as 325 pizzas would fly out its doors, with customers frequently adding drinks and side orders. But in recent weeks, orders began to change, the owner, Jerry Carollo, said.

“Before, a customer would get two pies, wings, garlic knots and soda, all of the extras,” Mr. Carollo said. “Now, they’re just doing the pizzas.”

To varying degrees, those sentiments are being echoed across the country by large pizza chains and small independent restaurants. Pizza, with its gooey cheese, sometimes topped with crisp, glistening rounds of pepperoni or bright strips of green peppers, has long played a quintessential role in American households. It is a comfort food for uncomfortable times that traditionally could feed an entire family relatively inexpensively.

...