Pizza Hut Shows Up Late to the BBQ Sauce Game

With help from Blake Shelton, Pizza Hut hopes it has the marketing power to sell a lot of barbecue pizza. The country’s largest pizza chain will launch three new varieties on May 12, with barbecue sauce replacing the customary tomato: Blake’s Smokehouse BBQ, Hawaiian BBQ, and Honey BBQ Chicken. The sauce is sweet, and there’s cheddar on the crust.

Pizza Hut is billing this as a huge launch, the largest since Three Cheese Stuffed Crust pizza, which was last year’s biggest product rollout. Country singer Shelton will star in the advertising campaign for the new items, which will start on May 18. Pizza Hut has tested the pizza in such BBQ-loving heartland markets as Dallas, as well as overseas in the U.K. and Australia, but has never offered it nationally in the U.S.