THE PERILS OF PIZZA HUT

By JAMES L. GRAFF/CHICAGO

The $450 order was phoned in four days in advance, and it sounded like one that any ambitious pizza deliverer would jump at: 40 large pies to Paseo Academy in Kansas City, Missouri, for a midday party for honor-roll students. To the school's surprise, Pizza Hut, the biggest pizza purveyor in town--and in the country--turned it down, saying the area was unsafe. A local chain, Westport Pizza, was more than happy to fill the order. Says honors dance major Glenndalynn Frazier, 17: "I knew we were supposed to have Pizza Hut, but it didn't stop us from having a good party."

But the story didn't end there. Just days later, principal Dorothy Shepherd learned that Pizza Hut had won a $170,000 contract to deliver pizzas twice a week to 21 Kansas City high and junior high schools, including Paseo, a $34 million state-of-the-art magnet school that serves a 70% minority student body. "I was outraged," says Shepherd. "I respect their wanting to protect their drivers. But how could it be unsafe one day but safe enough for them when it came to that contract? We didn't move the school." Her reaction was echoed by the Kansas City school board's finance and audit committee, which last week recommended canceling the Pizza Hut contract and summoned a company official to the school board's meeting on Jan. 22. "You'd think a big company like Pizza Hut could develop a strategy for delivering to everyone," says school board vice president John Rios. "It came as a shock to us that this kind of redlining still exists."

"The sole issue is the safety of our employees," responded Rob Doughty, a spokesman at Pizza Hut's Dallas headquarters, who accused school officials of "reacting to emotion." He says the company works out its "trade area restrictions" based on crime statistics. Nevertheless, he says, two Pizza Hut drivers have been killed on the job in the past six weeks--both in presumably safe areas. One murder occurred in Sacramento, California, the other in Salt Lake City, Utah. Regularly scheduled deliveries of the sort Pizza Hut bid on in Kansas City, Doughty claims, can be done safely with more than one driver--something, he says, the firm doesn't do for spot orders. But the company probably won't get a chance to make any deliveries to Paseo now that students are agitating for a Pizza Hut boycott and the school board is disposed to sprucing up menus with pizza from local firms.

--By James L. Graff/Chicago