Original subtitles

- Americans consume 3 billion of them each year,

spending over $46 billion on it.

It's the most popular food on the planet.

Pizza.

- 350 slices a second are consumed in this country.

- You might like a different kind of pizza than me

but I've never met a person that doesn't love pizza.

- But in 1950s America

it's practically unheard of.

- Can you imagine the United States without pizza?

- American pizza as we know it

wasn't shaped in Italy, New York City, or Chicago.

- Screw what it's supposed to be.

It is what we say it is.

- It was created in the Midwest

by two sets of entrepreneurial brothers.

- Without these two companies

your lives might have been devoid of pizza.

- Their battle for supremacy

will introduce pizza to the nation.

- You can walk into a Pizza Hut anywhere

and it feels like every other Pizza Hut you've ever been to.

- And revolutionize how we eat at home.

- Domino's, guaranteed delivery in 30 minutes or less.

- The definition of the word pizza

was created by Domino's and Pizza Hut.

- They'll become bitter rivals.

- We'll never stop coming for you.

- And one family will be torn apart.

- I don't know about this.

- This-

- This will be fun.

- Is "Pizza Wars."

- It's the late 1950s.

And in the wake of World War II

the American economy is booming.

More people can afford cars and homes than ever before.

And a growing middle class now spends more time

on the road and less time in the kitchen.

- America was expanding.

The building of the suburbs was underway.

The interstate highway system

had created all of these roads.

People were commuting the first time in American history.

- Car culture was going to give birth

to the desire and demand

for convenience food and fast food.

As people are on the go, you're going to have industries

that are looking at this and saying,

"Can we produce foods that people can eat on the go?"

So this is going to fuel new innovation.

It's also going to fuel new mores in tastes and demand.

- A bold new generation of entrepreneurs,

like Ray Kroc, rise up to feed

a nation constantly on the move.

- Well, congratulations, gentlemen.

The American people will never forget the name McDonald's.

- Creating what will become

a nearly $650 billion industry.

- All right, keep it moving, guys.

You're doing great.

- We all take fast food for granted now.

It didn't exist.

A meal was at least an hour of your time.

And when McDonald's rolled around,

oh my gosh, I can get a hamburger

in a matter of moments?

Don't I have to sit at the table, give my order,

wait for the waitress or waiter to come back?

No, those days were gone.

- Igniting a fast food gold rush.

By 1958, McDonald's has sold its 100 millionth hamburger.

A growing Miami chain

has just changed its name to Burger King.

Kentucky Fried Chicken offers a complete family meal

of chicken, dinner rolls, and gravy for $3.50.

And even a donut shop called Dunkin' Donuts

is sweeping the northeast.

In Kansas, a pair of college-aged brothers

believe they have what it takes

to cash in on the fast food boom.

But they're starting at the bottom.

- We'll have seating over here,

build out a kitchen in the back.

- The older brother,

Dan Carney is a business school student

with no experience in the restaurant industry.

- How exactly do you plan on running all of this

with your workload at school?

- I dropped out.

- What?

- Problem solved.

- Dan Carney really sought to create

a successful life for himself.

He was extremely ambitious and he wanted to be the man.

He wanted to be an executive.

So he struck out on his own.

So what does he do?

Dan Carney drops out of school.

- Carney has convinced

his younger brother Frank to join him,

and with a $600 loan from their mother

they've rented a rundown old bar.

- It's perfect.

- I know.

- That was sarcasm.

- I know.

Lighten up, this will be fun.

- Carney wants to compete

with industry titans like McDonald's,

but determined to carve his own path.

He's betting on an obscure dish

he read about in a local magazine.

Most Americans at the time have never even heard of it.

It's an Italian peasant food called pizza.

- Pizza has its origins in Naples, Italy

sometime in the late 17th, early 18th century.

Old dough was being flattened

and topped and baked in bread ovens.

And that became known as pizza napoletana.

Those early pizzas were really peasant food.

- The first pizzeria is opened in America

at the turn of the century in 1905,

Lombardi's Pizza down in Little Italy.

But let's face it,

it's not something that's growing across the nation.

There may be small pizzerias here and there

in different urban areas

where you have a Southern Italian community,

but it hasn't hit the big time.

- In the 1950s it's still very much an Italian product

that most Americans didn't understand.

So every article that even mentions pizza

has a description and a short explanation.

They're not assuming anybody knows

what the heck they're talking about.

- The funny thing is, pizza's such an Italian culture

and you would think two Irish brothers,

they'd come with fish and chips.

I just think like when opportunity is there,

somebody else sees it

and they're able to capitalize on it.

- The Carney brothers

need to turn a profit to pay their rent

so they're determined to open in just two weeks,

without any idea how to make pizza.

- Pizza is tough.

And I think if they'd realized

the odds of them being successful

they may not have taken them.

Pizza is not just like frozen patties.

Pizza is a living growing organism.

There's different temperatures, humidities.

Pizza is much harder than it looks.

- Desperate to figure out a recipe,

they bring in a part-time chef, John Bender,

to help them crack the code.

- French bread?

I thought pizza was supposed to be Italian.

- We're working with what we got.

- The most important element of a pizza

is without a doubt the crust.

And he had no idea how to make a dough.

So these resourceful guys just made something up.

- Mm, mm, it's thin.

It needs more time to rise.

- No, this is it.

- What, no, it says that it's supposed to be

soft leavened bread, Dan.

- Screw what it's supposed to be.

It is what we say it is.

This is better.

It's light, it's crispy.

This is our recipe.

- They just kind of threw ingredients on top of it

and baked it, and that was the blueprint.

It's totally wild that they

just made something up and it worked.

- They discovered for some reason

the taste of French bread is not bad for a pizza.

And of course, they created that in Kansas.

And so it makes sense to create something

that locals are gonna like.

Why would you make an authentic pizza like in Italy

when you don't have Italians living in your neighborhoods?

- Write down what we did?

- That's what I'm doing.

- The Carney brothers' pizzas appeal

to the Midwestern palate,

will someday spawn an $8.5 billion empire

and popularize pizza from coast to coast.

But for now, days away from opening,

they're risking everything on this new unproven food,

desperate that it'll somehow catch on.

800 miles from Wichita, another college student

is struggling to pay his way through school.

Orphaned at a young age and with no other family support

Tom Monaghan and his younger brother, Jim,

have taken out a $900 loan to buy a local sandwich shop.

- Tom was determined to become an architect,

to rise above his station and overcome

the sort of adverse circumstances of his birth.

While in architecture school

he actually bought a struggling restaurant

to help pay for school.

- The shop is called DomiNick's

after its founder, Dominick DiVarti.

- Let's throw a little extra cheese on there

to finish it off.

- And the menu features a variety

of Italian sandwiches and specialties,

including five different sizes of pizza,

something the Monaghans have no idea how to make.

- Throw it in the oven about 10, maybe 15 minutes.

And you'll know when it's done.

That's all there is to it.

- Is that it?

- That's it.

Most people order sandwiches.

Just follow the ingredients on the menu.

Your boys seem smart.

You'll figure it out.

She's all yours.

- When you open a restaurant,

there's so many challenges coming at you every day.

You have to make delicious food.

You have to deal with customers, staff.

You just don't open a law firm because you want it, right?

Or you just don't open a doctor's office.

But people feel like, hey, I can just open a restaurant.

And I always say, good luck.

- I don't know about this.

- Here they are, these two Irish brothers

raised in an orphanage who've never

made pizza in their lives before,

owning a restaurant that would become one

of the most successful on the planet Earth.

- Eventually bold innovations

and a pivotal name change will turn the company

into a nearly $15 billion global empire.

but only one brother will reap the rewards.

- By the late 1950s,

the booming economy lifts more people out of poverty

and into the middle class than ever before.

- The 1950s remained the ideal

of what family life should be,

of what home life should be,

of what civic life should be,

and what the middle class could be.

This is a period in American history

where the middle class is in essence

larger than at any time.

And also people can move into it

with greater ease than at any time.

- In the Midwest,

a surge in commercial aircraft manufacturing

propels Wichita to become the largest city in Kansas.

And Dan and Frank Carney recognized

the unprecedented opportunity

to feed the growing middle class.

But their restaurant, which will serve

a virtually unheard-of product, is set to open in two days.

And among a long list of growing concerns,

they still don't have a name.

- Pizza Spot?

There's too many letters.

- I know, but it's gotta have pizza in it.

- Okay, then that leaves us with three letters.

- On a tight budget,

the Carney brothers plan to use

a free sign from the Coca-Cola Company.

But it only has room for eight letters.

- Pizza Pit?

Ah, keep going.

- Pizza.

Pizza Hut?

- Pizza Hut.

- I don't know, man, really, Pizza Hut?

Really?

- You got a better idea?

- No.

- Pizza Hut.

The place kinda looks like a hut.

- Long before becoming

the iconic red-roofed restaurant

with over 18,000 locations across the globe,

on May 31st, 1958, the original Pizza Hut opens.

It's the start of a chain that will redefine dining out

for generations of Americans,

and bring pizza as we know it to the world.

It's a gamble for the Carney brothers.

But lucky for them, Midwesterners are captivated

by this entirely new type of food.

And within four months locals are flocking to Pizza Hut

for a fast, filling, affordable meal for the whole family.

- I think if you stop and you realize

that the American pizza started in Kansas,

that alone would give people pause.

But I think that that also explains the vast success.

In Italy there's very little cheese, very little sauce.

It's not like we have in America.

Dan Carney took an approach

to a decidedly Italian traditional food

that was very American,

making the crust more like a biscuit,

having it be a little more buttery

a little more rich, a little more fried.

You could have a pizza that was just yummy comfort food

that happened to be called pizza

even though it resembled traditional pizza

as much as I resemble Beyonce.

- Hi, how are ya?

Welcome to Pizza Hut.

- Pizza Hut created a definition

for this food for most Americans.

So I meet somebody from the West Coast, or the Midwest,

or the Southeast, they grew up

with Pizza Hut as their pizza.

Then all other pizza is measured up against that.

Whether or not that's an authentic Italian version,

it makes no difference to the consumer,

because that becomes their definition.

- As the Carneys' dine-in restaurant

is introducing the world to their version of pizza,

the Monaghans' cramped sandwich joint

is unexpectedly exceeding its capacity.

- It's interesting to see these two brothers in business

doing something that they had zero idea how to do.

They have this little tiny restaurant.

You can't fit more tables into a 500 square foot space.

And being a busy restaurant is sometimes as bad

as being a slow restaurant, because the last thing

Tom wanted to do was turn away any business.

- It's a zoo out there.

We're backed up halfway to Tuesday.

People have nowhere to sit.

- Tell them to take their pizzas to go.

That's why it's called a to go box.

- They're also complaining about the wait.

- Then tell them to wait at home.

- Rather than fight against

the small footprint of his restaurant,

he thought maybe it would be to an advantage.

Small rent, small space, bring the food to the people.

- Tom Monaghan realizes

that if he can bring his customers food

directly to their door,

he can eliminate lines and increase his customer base.

- So he decides to use the roads essentially

as his restaurant and offer delivery.

And he really, really pushed delivery

to be the center point of his business model.

- Home delivery is an idea

that will redefine the way Americans eat.

But in the late 1950s, it's an industry-wide afterthought

limited to a handful of Chinese restaurants

in densely-populated cities.

- Delivery is not that popular, hasn't really taken off.

Nobody's delivering to your door with hot food.

It is a change in how Americans eat.

- Tom turns his own beat-up VW Bug

into the company's first delivery vehicle.

- The idea of being able to get that experience

in your home, that is really what they revolutionized.

I mean, it wasn't something

that most Americans had access to.

- But Tom's risky decision

to start a delivery service-

- Okay, I'll see you then.

- Opens a rift between the brothers.

- Jim Monaghan was sort of the coin flip of Tom Monaghan.

Where Tom was really focused, Jim was kind of more aloof.

And where Tom would make a decision right away

based on the logic of the moment,

Jim would've said, "Let's hold off and think about it more."

So that split decision making

is a problem for a partnership.

- Although the strategy is an instant success,

with sales doubling in just a month,

now it's an intense struggle to keep up with demand.

- Heads up, got a live one.

- So now the capacity of his restaurant

was not limited by the seats at the table.

It was limited by how far you can drive a delivery car.

And that resulted in huge success.

But now getting calls means you have to get the orders

made, and out, and delivered.

- DomiNick's.

- They are probably missing half a dozen calls

whilst the next order is sitting there

getting cold on the counter.

- These were supposed to go out 40 minutes ago.

Come on, get these out the door.

- DomiNicks, what can I get for you?

Jim, better late than never.

I need you to rush these up to the north side.

- Now I'm a delivery boy?

- I don't have time to argue.

Are you going to do it or not?

- You're on delivery duty.

- Tom wanted to do things his way.

And he was working very hard

and he expected his younger brother

to work as hard and be as dedicated.

But being the older brother, he also likely

expected his younger brother to follow what he was doing.

And that may have grated on Jim a little bit.

- While tension boils between the Monaghans,

in Kansas Dan Carney is preparing another big idea

for his seven-month-old business.

- I think we're ready.

- Yeah, for what?

- To expand.

This restaurant, it's just a proof of concept.

- What, you want to open a second location?

- I was thinking five.

- We can't afford five.

- We don't have to afford it.

We're franchising.

- How bold was it of Dan Carney

to think that he could just come along

and franchise pizza when pizza

wasn't an established food yet?

- Dan Carney isn't satisfied

owning Wichita's most popular pizza joint.

He's determined to introduce pizza across the nation

and build the biggest restaurant chain in the country.

- It's 1958 and the Carney brothers

have opened a successful restaurant

in which introducing locals to pizza.

But their goal is to dominate the market

from coast to coast.

- This is the businessman.

This is the marketeer.

This is the person who essentially

wants to get a product to the public to mass produce

and turn that into a fortune.

- To do it, they're gambling on franchising,

a strategy that can allow businesses

to expand quickly at low cost

and has been used to sell everything

from sewing machines to cars.

- Franchising allows the replication of the brand.

I create a product or a service.

And that system is then licensed

to a third party, a franchisee.

In exchange they charge a continuing franchise fee.

It may sound very common today,

but it was radical at that point in time.

It wasn't something that a lot of people knew.

Very few of them understand it.

- Pioneers like Harland Sanders

and Ray Kroc applied franchising to food,

eventually turning Kentucky Fried Chicken

and McDonald's into global powerhouses.

Now Dan Carney wants to use their own strategy against them,

but with pizza as the new weapon.

- Dan was thinking about long-term growth

and he wanted this chain to get started.

I think he extrapolated into the future.

He said, "Nobody's doing it now,

"but if they can do it for hamburgers,

"why don't we do it for pizza?"

- It's totally bonkers that these guys

who have no idea how to make pizza,

within about a year of them opening their first restaurant

they start franchising.

I mean, I know people who work on it for decades

before they start thinking

about how to franchise that model.

- Even though pizza

is hardly known in the Midwest,

the Carneys quickly launch six new locations

of the Pizza Hut brand.

- They turned pizza into a sit down dining experience

that was affordable and accessible

to the middle American family.

And I think that the genius of that cannot be overlooked.

- To accelerate growth,

the Carneys slash franchising fees to an average of $4,500,

half as much as McDonald's.

- He may have underpriced himself,

but Dan decided that he was going to go for growth.

If you at least grow, you've got cashflow.

You can figure it out later on as you go down the road.

And that's what the Carney brothers did.

- One or two? Two?

- By 1963, Pizza Hut expands out of Kansas

and east of the Mississippi, growing to 42 locations.

It's the largest pizza chain in the country

and has no close competitor, for now.

Meanwhile in Michigan, Tom Monaghan's bold bet

to take on delivery isn't making his life

any easier.

- DomiNick's, what can I get for you?

- As DomiNick's struggles

to keep up with its complex menu.

- It had to have been insane.

I mean, you've got orders coming in

for five different sizes of pizza.

And if you put the wrong topping on the wrong size,

then that's a scrap and that's in the garbage.

If the sandwich is made wrong, it's lost money.

- There's only so long

people are willing to wait for their food,

even at home.

- DomiNick's, what can I get for you?

I'm sorry, it's on its way.

I understand, okay.

Unbelievable.

That's the third canceled order in the last hour.

- The more items he had, and the more options he had,

and the more confusion he had,

the more mistakes they made.

- Everybody, listen up.

We're only selling pizza the rest of the night,

two sizes only, 12 inch and 16.

- That's less than half our menu.

The menu stays as is.

- DomiNick's, what can I get for you?

I'm sorry, but

sandwiches are off the menu for tonight.

Only 12 and 16 inch pies for the rest of the night.

Great, that's one 16 inch cheese pizza.

That'll be $2 and we'll be there in less than an hour.

- Rather than play second fiddle,

Jim Monaghan walks out of the partnership,

returning to his job as a mailman

and turning control of the business over to Tom.

- Jim Monaghan decided to leave.

Tom gave him the delivery car, the Volkswagen Beetle,

in exchange for his half of the company.

So, I hope that car ran for a long time.

- His brother sold his stake in the company

for their beat-up VW Beetle.

In point of fact, had he retained his stake,

he would have made $800 million.

Instead he got a VW Beetle.

Bad trade, bad trade.

- By 1968, less than a decade

after opening the first Pizza Hut,

the Carney brothers have catapulted pizza

into the national consciousness.

It's even being sold in the frozen food aisle.

- That audience for pizza's growing

as more and more people try it.

So it's not something that alienates a lot of tastes

but it's something that kids like.

So it can be eaten by the whole family.

It has a communalness to it.

And I think that fuels its growth.

It creates a moment where people can eat together

and it gets really associated with family moments.

- At the end of the 1960s,

Pizza Hut now has 300 locations

serving 1 million customers every year.

And the Carneys' signature red-roofed restaurants

can be found from coast to coast,

making Pizza Hut America's first national pizza chain.

- The Carneys were very much ahead of the curve.

They did for pizza what McDonald's did for hamburgers.

- To keep up with their rapid expansion,

Frank Carney introduces a new system

of ingredient distribution, a central commissary

that freeze dries each ingredient

and distributes them out to every Pizza Hut franchise,

guaranteeing consistency.

- They use that fast food approach,

having an offsite hub where they can

prepare these ingredients in advance, precooked,

and just need to be reheated onsite.

So a lot of the sort of cooking and the deep labor

that would come with managing, running,

and supplying a local pizzeria is eliminated.

- The Carney brothers' success proves that pizza

is the next franchise gold rush,

breeding copycats and putting a target on Pizza Hut's back.

In Michigan, Tom Monaghan is now solely in charge

of DomiNick's, and his bold move to only sell pizza

has the business running better than ever.

- He understood that you need a small menu

that you can put out, many with the same ingredients,

at a fast pace, and you streamline it.

If you look at the way the back of a kitchen runs

and you look at the automobile factory,

they're both assembly lines of a different kind.

- Now Tom sets his sights

on spreading his delivery pizza across the nation.

- Tom Monaghan, I guess,

was seeing what Pizza Hut was doing.

And Tom said, "Why not us?"

- To do it, Monaghan has an ingenious strategy.

He'll target the one demographic

that's responsible for most of his profits.

College students.

Michigan has the most colleges in the US

and Tom is opening his newest store at the doorstep

of the most popular, Michigan State University.

With a dormitory population of 20,000 at the time,

it's the largest in the world.

- The decision to expand near college campuses

was a stroke of genius,

because in a residential neighborhood

you've got houses all over the place,

whereas a college dorm building

has hundreds of potential customers.

So the more deliveries you can make to a smaller area,

the higher the profit margin.

- Now a restaurant chain,

Tom unveils his next big move, a new company logo

with three dots representing his first three stores

and a new name that will one day deliver

1.5 million pizzas every day, Domino's.

- I think Domino's has always been incredibly clever

when it comes to how they position themselves

in the marketplace.

They're nearly in every single college town.

Sadly, at my own university in Atlanta, Georgia

they affiliated themselves directly with our meal plan.

My folks had to put more money

in my account halfway through a semester.

- As Monaghan lays the foundation

for his empire to flourish,

his success doesn't go unnoticed.

- Little Caesar's, what do we know about them?

Funnily that they haven't even hit the hundreds yet.

Now I'll take a look at Shakey's.

Shakey's, California, West Coast brand.

They're not a threat to us.

- Sir, you're going to want to take a look at this.

- See that right there?

- Is that real?

- Yeah.

- It says Domino's, another Michigan place.

They're offering a delivery service.

How are we supposed to beat that?

- While Domino's Pizza is relatively small,

they're growing exponentially.

In 1969 they're opening nearly a store a week.

- We're the McDonald's of pizza.

They're not even Burger King.

- For now, Domino's' delivery model

isn't a threat, but left unchecked

it will soon become Pizza Hut's most bitter rival.

- By 1970,

Pizza Hut sales surge past $31 million a year,

the modern equivalent of 250 million.

But after years of unbridled growth

Frank and Dan Carney have hit a major obstacle.

Over 100 of their restaurants

are teetering on the brink of collapse.

And the problem is clear.

America's first national pizza chain

is failing on the East Coast.

- The Northeast has its own style.

It was really where Italians settled

and Italians' expectations for pizza

were not going to be met by pizza from the Midwest.

- Nothing.

- People on the East Coast

have an emotional attachment to pizza.

So now you're treading on my pizza.

You know, this is an insult.

Pizza Hut was thin and crispy.

You call this a pizza?

This isn't recognizable to me.

- McDonald's is McDonald's, KFC is KFC.

They don't change their formula

just because someone somewhere doesn't like it.

- I am not suggesting a major change, Dan.

- No?

You just want to change the one recipe

that's gotten us to where we are.

You want to serve thin crust in some states

and thick crust in others?

It's not scalable.

The whole point of what we've built

is that you can walk into a Pizza Hut anywhere

and it feels like every other Pizza Hut you've ever been to.

- Then we do both.

We offer thin crust and we offer thick crust, two options.

But we can handle it.

The restaurants, they can handle it.

We can do this.

- 15 years after developing

their signature pizza crust,

Dan and Frank Carney are back in the kitchen,

working on a recipe that they believe

will appeal to customers more familiar

with traditional Italian pizza.

- Pizza Hut decided that the way to get by on the East Coast

was not to compete with the beloved pizzas

that people are used to on the East Coast,

but to come at it from a different direction.

So this is where they came up

with a thicker-style pizza that wouldn't be confused,

you know, we're not trying to copy your pizza.

This is something different.

We're Pizza Hut.

- In 1973, Pizza Hut

finally unveils its thick crust.

- It's almost definitely meant to be cut

with a fork and a knife.

The toppings would spill over.

The crust was thicker than most regular pizzas.

The center of the crust was more buttery,

pillowy, doughy in terms of its design and its construction.

- Pizza Hut's new thick crust

will come to be known as pan pizza

and go on to outsell their original thin crust recipe,

securing its place as an American icon.

- When Pizza Hut came with the pan pizza

it was almost like a fantasy.

You'd get a slice of pan pizza from Pizza Hut.

And they had the cheese always just looking heavy,

and you get a nice thick pan pizza

with the garlic soaked into the crust.

That's a bite you're going to enjoy.

- While Pizza Hut's innovation

allows their Northeast restaurants to thrive,

in Michigan Tom Monaghan is about

to transform home delivery forever.

- Good to go.

- Domino's' fast-paced growth

has exposed a serious problem.

Drivers are stacking more and more pizzas

for larger delivery runs

and their boxes aren't up to the challenge.

- I want them sturdy, reinforced.

- Traditionally pizza boxes were made

out of much thinner cardboard

and absolutely did nothing to retain heat.

There was no insulation.

There was no means of protecting the pizza.

It was just a thin white cardboard box.

- No, that's right, stackable.

No, not three high.

I'm talking seven, eight.

Okay.

- Where do you want these delivered?

- Bring them in.

- Tom came up with the corrugated box

which really revolutionized the pizza industry.

- It was a heavier gauge corrugated cardboard

which allowed for a little more heat to be trapped.

But being durable allowed the pizzas to be stacked.

- Good to go. - All right.

- Still protecting the pizza,

but allowing the delivery person

to carry multiple pizzas at one time.

I think it speaks to the efficacy of all his ideas

that they have still been adopted

into the modern pizza industry

to this day in the 21st century.

- By 1973, just over a decade

after buying DomiNick's, Tom Monaghan now runs

a small empire of 76 stores reaching across 13 states.

- Tom Monaghan's always had a spark in him.

He wanted to turn Domino's

from being a wobbly upstart company

to being a serious player in the pizza business.

Tom wanted to challenge the big,

gargantuan red roof Pizza Hut.

- But Domino's' meteoric rise

comes at a huge cost.

Monaghan is offering investors

sweetheart franchising deals,

even supplying each new store with a fleet of delivery cars,

eating up all of Domino's' profits

and forcing him into debt.

The Domino's business was doing well

but Tom wasn't living large or anything.

He was living in a trailer with his wife,

and in order to keep growing franchises

borrowed $400,000 using his tiny trailer as collateral.

And he knew that if he defaulted on that loan, he was out.

- Domino's is in serious financial trouble.

And his rival, the most powerful pizza chain

in the world, sees an opening.

- Can I get you anything?

Water, slice of pizza?

- No, we're fine, but thank you.

- In the fall of 1973,

Domino's' financial trouble brings Tom Monaghan

face to face with his biggest rivals, the Carney brothers.

- What's this?

- That's an offer for a controlling stake in Domino's.

- It's not for sale.

- We know you're hurting.

You could walk away a rich man.

- I appreciate the offer, I do, but I'm sorry.

Can't do it.

- You sure?

There's nothing that we can do to change your mind?

- Honestly, no.

It's my baby.

- Betting on yourself, hm.

I'd do the same.

But just so you know,

we'll never stop coming for you.

Good luck to you.

- Hey, best of luck.

- The reason he said no is because

he wanted to see this thing through

and he'd gone through a lot of work, and he was still young.

He wasn't even 40.

So he still had some energy in him.

He had lots of courage and he said,

"We're going to fight this thing out."

- By the mid 1970s

Domino's is sliding deeper and deeper into debt.

Tom Monaghan's missed his chance to cash out and get rich.

And without a sudden reversal of fortune

Domino's will continue to fall

further and further behind Pizza Hut.

- People in the food industry are dreamers.

I mean, I think that's the one trait that we have in common.

We're dreamers.

The idea of being able to create your own party

and have people from all over the community,

all over the city, possibly the country

come to the party you create.

I think that drives people.

- Oh, one more order just came in.

- No, sorry, my shift's about to end.

- It's just one delivery, real quick.

- I got somewhere to be in half an hour.

- I guarantee you, you can make it there and back

in less than 30 minutes.

- Then in 1975, a turning point.

Monaghan devises an unprecedented assurance

to customers.

- Domino's, guaranteed delivery on 30 minutes or less.

- He promises delivery within half an hour.

- You got it.

- Or the pizza is free.

- That was unheard of.

To say 30 minutes or it's free,

that you knew without question or pause

when you would get your pizza by.

Okay, I'm going to get my pizza in 30 minutes guaranteed.

And if not, I have a free pizza coming to me.

That was like a win-win for the customer.

- Domino's, guaranteed delivery in 30 minutes or less.

- The 30 minutes or less pledge

is franchise wide and it's a huge success.

- Domino's Pizza guaranteed.

- Changing the trajectory

of the entire company.

- The reason Domino's, I think, was so successful

is because they made great delivered pizza.

What they brought to the table was bringing you a pizza

that was 20 minutes younger than the competition.

And Tom Monaghan just attacked the efficiency.

And Domino's, they still do that today.

- Domino's' delivery guarantee

helped propel them to become

the best-selling pizza chain in the world,

with sales skyrocketing to over $7 billion.

While Pizza Hut is close behind with 5.5 billion in sales,

it boasts more stores than Domino's

with 19,000 worldwide to Domino's' 17,000.

The pizza wars still continue in their fierce rivalry today.

- Even though Domino's and Pizza Hut

are not authentic Italian foods,

they have done more for the spread of pizza

and the awareness of pizza in the United States

than all the authentic pizzerias combined.

- Tom Monaghan and the Carney brothers,

they're both really playing off of a tradition,

but simultaneously making it their own.

And that's the American dream.