The great salad towers of Pizza Hut

Jason Prowd mentioned in his post on Boost last week that operating single-purpose food outlets was a tough business – but one area that does better than most is pizza, although perhaps not in China.

Pizza Huts, for example, are seen as upmarket sit-down restaurants in China – well they have to try to be upmarket to get away with their ridiculous prices. Five years ago I took a brief stroll into a Chinese Pizza Hut, saw the 100 yuan (roughly $18) large pizzas and I walked straight out.

But in my haste I missed one of the wonders of human ingenuity (so my weekend internet browsing tells me). Back in the day it cost 32 yuan (roughly $6) for a one-time use of the salad bar and, to add insult to injury, you could only use one bowl.

With limited horizontal space, the obvious solution was to build upwards – and so the great salad towers of Pizza Hut were born.

Tragically Pizza Hut closed its Chinese salad bars in 2009 due to excessive losses.  Though if anyone feels inspired to build one, here is a detailed set of instructions.