How Pizza Hut Undertakes the Responsibility of CSR in Their Business

This research task was compiled for multiple purposes:

Firstly, one purpose of the research task is to provide an insight into how Pizza hut undertakes the responsibility of CSR, how the school could get involved in practical CSR and the benefits of CSR in a broad scope for any business. This research task has been compiled by searching multiple informative platforms that gave insight into the various topics that will be discussed in this report: The Background of Pizza Hut; Pizza Hut’s CSR commitments; CSR and the school; and the need for CSR.

This research task content will be discussing how Pizza Hut came into the market, how Pizza Hut has contributed to the environment and help tackle social issues.

Additionally, multiple CSR programmes that a school could get involved in has been discussed in this research task. Lastly the ultimate purpose of this research task, to discuss whether or not CSR is a necessary task that businesses must undergo.

The ultimate goal of this research task is to unpack the benefits of CSR and if businesses should do CSR voluntary in order to improve the environment and communities.

Background of Pizza Hut

Pizza Hut is a multi-million-dollar fast food chain that sells pizzas, drinks and desserts to the public. However, Pizza Hut hasn’t always been a multi-million-dollar business, rather it started as a small pizza parlour in Kansas.
It all started when one friend of Dan and Frank Carney, college students, suggested that they open a Pizza parlour in Kansas. They established Pizza Hut in 1958. Dan and Frank gave free pizza out to the community on opening night to spread their name through the community. The company started its journey in 1959 when Dan and Frank bought the first franchise. Over the next few years, Pizza hut aggressively marketed their pizza restaurant and grew exponentially. By 1966 there were 145 Pizza Hut restaurants.

In the 1970s Pizza hut grew exponentially. Their method of planning had shifted from relying on the financial numbers from the annual financial statements to formulating a more developed long-term plan, which made all the difference. By 1971 the 100th restaurant was opened. Incidentally, a well-known brand became interested in Pizza Hut’s success, PepsiCo. Thus in 1977 PepsiCo decided to purchase Pizza hut and implement it as one of its chains.
Pizza hut went strong financially in the 1980s and early 1990s with rising profits. However, the profits started to decline in the mid-1990s. The competition started to reduce prices and attract Pizza Hut’s customers to them. PepsiCo put in measures to fight the declining profits, such as introducing new ideas to the public every 2 years. However, PepsiCo eventually decided to let their restaurant businesses go, and Pizza Hut was released in 1997. Nowadays YUM brands operate Pizza hut, amongst Taco Bell and KFC.

Pizza Hut is still running successfully today. Over 18431 restaurants have been opened in Pizza Hut's name and operating in over 105 countries. Pizza hut sales are predominantly In the USA (47%), but Pizza Hut has expanded to multiple countries such as South Africa, which has allowed Pizza hut to achieve a 663-million-dollar operating profit. Evidently, Pizza Hut is still growing and is one of the biggest Pizza restaurants in the world.

Possibly the reason for Pizza Hut’s success is their marketing strategies, which is freedom of choice. Customers that eat at Pizza Hut will have a choice in their food, such as which toppings they would want. Other fast food companies will force customers to select a pre-determined item on the menu, however, Pizza Hut’s freedom of choices makes it more attractive to many consumers. Pizza Hut utilizes their attractiveness to attract over 50000 customers per day, have an advantage over competitors by giving their customers freedom of choice. Additionally, Pizza Hut will adapt the menu to the country that they operate in, so their menu will always be different in different countries.

Evidently, Pizza Hut has grown from a small pizza parlour in Kansas to a massive enterprise that is influencing the market with their freedom of choice.

Pizza Hut’s CSR commitments

Pizza Hut has been involved in numerous efforts to improve their environment and tackle social issues in the community. Pizza Hut has earned themselves a good reputation due to their high activities of CSR.

Firstly, Pizza Hut believes that education is an important aspect of anyone’s life. Thus, they have encouraged younger people to read with their BOOK IT! Programme. One of the aspects of this programme is that they allow donations to be made to an NPO, which will then purchase books and allocate books to communities that desperately need it, which will be achieving their purpose of the CSR programme, to promote reading in younger people. The second aspect of the programme is that a week has been allocated to celebrate youth reading called “National Young Readers Week” which happens in November. Typically, during this week local celebrities will go to a school and read to the children to encourage reading in young children. The last aspect of the programme is an 8-week challenge. A pre-school teacher can take up the challenge for her students to undergo. The teacher must read to the class of children for 20 minutes per lesson, for 8 weeks. After 8 weeks, that teacher and students will be entered in a competition to win a Pizza Hut gift card and a selected book. The challenge is more for encouraging reading in the children rather than the prizes, which links back to the purpose of the CSR initiative.

Another program that Pizza Hut has in place to fight against social issues is their Harvest Program. This program allows people and industries to donate surplus food and have that food to be given to the poor. Pizza hut itself has donated over 45 359 237 kilograms of surplus food to the program which has all been utilized to feed the poor. This program was established in 1992 and many businesses have joined to aid the fight against hunger in poorer communities. This program tackles one social problem, hunger, however, it indirectly impacts the environment as well. The reason because food that is transported to a landfill will become Methane. Methane causes dangers to the environment, for example, Methane can be highly reactive to certain chemicals and could result in an explosion, which could put workers at risk of serious burns and possibly death Additionally another issue that Methane has attached to it is global warming. Global warming is a rising concern for scientists as it will negatively affect ecosystems and organisms, and it has been found Methane can warm up the Earth 48% quicker than CO2. Therefore, the more Methane present in landfills, the quicker global warming can be accelerated, thus feeding poorer people with food is a way to prevent this environment issue from arising.

Furthermore, Pizza hut also got involved in the 100 000 opportunities initiatives with a few other businesses. The initiative provides an opportunity for young people to train and learn something about business. Pizza Hut and a few other corporates will collectively train young people. Jobs will be created as on-the-spot jobs will be offered to some of the young people, which will decrease the unemployment rate and allow Pizza Hut to possibly hire a talented person.

Lastly, Pizza Hut will help with relief efforts when a natural disaster strikes and hits an area. For instance, after Prachin Buri was flooded in 2012, Pizza hut went out to the area and offered over 700 family’s food.

In conclusion, it is evident that Pizza Hut has many CSR programmes that improve communities and the environment. Pizza Hut has targeted social issues such as poverty and education while assisting with preserving the environment as well.

CSR and Your School

A CSR initiative must be sustainable so that the business can sustain it. Big organizations can have multiple CSR programmes, ones targeting social issues and others targeting environmental issues. Businesses that are as big as Walmart or Microsoft can target multiple communities without their business activities being hinder.

However, with a school, there are limitations to CSR programmes, because it is a small area compared to massive businesses such as the aforementioned businesses. However, there are still CSR programmes a School can implement that can impact the environment and social issues positively.

Firstly, the school can volunteer in local efforts to clean up the environment. For instance, the school can organize events to clean rivers, such as the Jukskei river, or possibly pick up litter that is impulsively thrown on the side of roads. Volunteering doesn’t have to be restricted to river cleanups or picking up litter, rather students could volunteer to donate blood to South African National Blood Service.

Another way that the school could get involved with CSR is recycling. Instead of throwing away recyclable materials such as paper that are used during class, they could be recycled. Recycling can be done by putting separate bags in each classroom and outside for paper and plastic, then the School can take the recyclable materials to Municipal drop-offs. Recycling will help preserve the environment by reducing littering and reducing the waste that goes to landfills. Recycling is also an opportunity for people to be employed, thus if the school started to recycle, jobs could potentially be made.

One of the social issues that the School could tackle is emotional stress in students. Students will inevitably stress during highly stressful periods such as upcoming exams or important assessments. However, if the school could implement classes that teach students to have better time organization and stress management, then the students of the school could reduce the amount of stress that they experience. The reduced stress will lead to happier students and less stressed teachers while improving the grades of the students who took the class. Furthermore, the graph below highlights the effect of stress on academic performance. As mentioned before, stress levels will be higher during exam periods due to expectations.

In conclusion, the school has options to impact the environment and make a difference in the community. Also, the school can tackle the problem of emotional issues that arise during highly stressful conditions.

The Need for CSR

The necessity of CSR has been debated over for years, where some have argued that CSR is essential to business activities while others argue that CSR is wasted resources.

However, CSR is an effective way for the business to be more sustainable in the market and allow multiple benefits for the business to capitalize on.
Firstly, the business function that must capitalize on the CSR programme is the Marketing Function. When a business implements a CSR function in a community, the marketing function must advertise the CSR programme to the public. This will improve the business’s reputation. A business with a good reputation will attract more customers, because customers will want to buy at a business that is positively affecting the environment in some way.

Additionally, people will talk about the CSR programme if there is enough marketing to ensure people know about it, which will lead to an increase in customers. Furthermore, customers that see the business in a positive view will become brand loyal to the business, as they feel that they are buying from a caring business.

Secondly the business can utilize CSR to differentiate itself from competitors. If a business use CSR to differentiate itself, then they could possibly attract customers from their competitors, which will improve the business’s competitive position in the market. The business then could look at better opportunities in the market place.

Thirdly CSR programmes will positively affect a business’s reputation. A business with a good reputation will reap many benefits in the workplace. For instance, employees working at a business that has a CSR program has a higher chance of staying rather than leaving, which reduces staff turnover for the business. The reason employees will stay is because the feeling of being in an ethical business will directly affect the physiological needs, according to Maslow’s Pyramid of needs. The employees will have higher self-esteem as they are working for a caring business, which then the managers of the business could then encourage workers to achieve the highest level of Maslow’s pyramid of needs, Self-actualization. As a result, employees will more efficiently.

The other benefit to a good reputation is that the business will be more sustainable in the market. A business that is ethical in practice will be seen positively by relevant stakeholders, thus reducing the threat of them leaving the business. The business then could find other avenues of income in the market place to boost the sales of the business.

The last benefit to a CSR programme is the support received from the assisted community. The assisted community will have a better quality of life because of the CSR programme. With a better quality of life, the salaries and wages of the people will increase, and the will have more disposable income. The community will support the business by spending money there, as they see the business as caring. If the business wants to further improve their CSR commitments by expanding into more communities, then more communities will support the business and sales will increase. Furthermore, the business can use these communities to broadcast their CSR programmes to the Media and improve their reputation.

In conclusion, CSR has attractive benefits to a business, such as opportunities to get ahead of competitors due to a good reputation and support from communities. Therefore, the need for CSR is high, as communities and business will benefit from having CSR programmes being implemented.

Should Businesses get involved in CSR?

I personally agree that businesses should get involved with CSR. CSR provides benefits to the business, stakeholders and the people affected by the CSR programme. CSR is a form of marketing that a business can get involved in to boost sales tremendously and improve its competitive place in the market place. Environments and communities will benefit from any help that is received from any business. Ultimately what is the purpose of having a million-dollar turnover if you don’t give back to the environment or communities that assisted you in your business operations? A business should repay the environment and communities to show that the business actually cares about them. Lastly, the businesses should notice that CSR is a form of reputation improving, which will consist of many benefits that the business can take capitalize on.

Conclusion

This research task has highlighted: Pizza Hut’s background; Pizza Hut’s CSR commitments; Methods of CSR that the school can participate in; and the need for CSR. From this research task, it is evident that CSR is an important aspect of a business. Businesses can use CSR to improve their position in the competitive market while receiving many opportunities to gain an advantage over competitors.

Additionally, CSR will benefit communities positively by improving their conditions, ultimately improving the standard of living. While the environment also benefits from operations such as the Harvest Program.

Ultimately this research task clearly shows that CSR is a fundamental aspect to business practice and all businesses should undertake a CSR program regardless of the business size.