Pizza Hut co-founder passes away at 82
Date: 05/12/2020
Frank Carney, who together with his brother started the Pizza Hut empire in Wichita, died Wednesday from pneumonia. He was 82.
Carney had recently recovered from COVID-19, but had Alzheimer's disease for quite a decade, the Wichita Eagle reported. He died at 4:30 a.m. at an assisted living facility in Wichita, his wife and brother told the Eagle.
Frank Carney was a 19-year-old student at Wichita State University when he and his 26-year-old brother, Dan, borrowed $600 from their mother to start out a pizza business in 1958 near their family's Carney's Market.
When you are starting a business that's getting to pay your way through college, you do not even believe what the economy is doing, Carney once told a 1992 entrepreneurship conference at Wichita State.
We didn't care about who was within the White House or what the percentage was," he said. "The entrepreneur, all he cares is: Is there a marketplace for the product? am i able to sell it?
PepsiCo bought Pizza Hut for $300 million in 1977. Over the years, he got involved in various business ventures, including other food companies, land , oil and gas, automotive, rental and recreational businesses.
Only five of about 20 of the businesses made him money, which his brother contends is really not a nasty average.
He probably lost most of what he had made in Pizza Hut, Dan Carney said. He wasn't depressed. He was just aggressive to create something different.
When PepsiCo decided to maneuver the Pizza Hut headquarters from Wichita to Dallas a choice Frank Carney thought was an error it solidified his decision to become a Papa John's Pizza franchisee within the 1990s and compete against his former business associates within the Wichita market.
Frank Carney had one among the most important Papa John's franchises and kept working until Alzheimer's struck.
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