Higher Prices for Pizza? Blame Cheese

There’s a reason that Pizza Hut charges extra for stuffed crust. Cheese is generally the costliest ingredient for pizza restaurants—it’s 35 percent to 40 percent of Papa John’s food costs, for instance—and it’s getting more expensive.

The price of mozzarella cheese is up about 16 percent since the beginning of December, and the price of cheddar cheese has jumped about 25 percent, according to data from Bloomberg.