Pizza Power 2021

In a year full of surprises and setbacks, the pizza business showed it was recession-proof and pandemic-proof, offering hope—and lessons in survival—for other segments of the restaurant industry.

BY RICK HYNUM

Looking back on 2020, it’s hard to tally up everything that went wrong. The pandemic cast a gloomy shadow over the nation, while civic unrest heated up and spilled into city streets. Wildfires raged across the western United States. Beloved heroes, from Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Herman Cain and John Lewis to Little Richard and Kobe Bryant, shuffled off their mortal coils. We even lost Eddie Van Halen, for heaven’s sake. And then there were the hurricanes—so many hurricanes.