<description>Pizza Hut says it invented the stuffed crust pizza. A judge agreed. But Anthony Mongiello has US patent 4,661,361, no matter what the law says.</description>

Eat This Podcast

Jeremy Cherfas

Anthony Mongiello, Inventor of the Stuffed Crust Pizza

MAR 4, 202426 MIN
Eat This Podcast

Anthony Mongiello, Inventor of the Stuffed Crust Pizza

MAR 4, 202426 MIN

Description

An image from the title page of US patent 4,661,361

Headshot of Anthony Mongiellow, a large man with a greying Van Dyke beard, wearing a black shirt emblazoned with his company name and logo.
Anthony Mongiello
A recent documentary tells the story of how a kid from Brooklyn invented the stuffed crust pizza, sued Pizza Hut for ripping him off, and lost. It is a fascinating story, and left me in no doubt about who actually invented the stuffed crust pizza: Anthony Mongiello, that kid from Brooklyn. But it was the incidental asides Anthony dropped in the documentary, along with a look at Formaggio Cheese, the company he built, that really made me want to talk to him about his family of cheese engineers and his own history as a cheese inventor.

Notes

  1. Take a look at Formaggio Cheese if you want to get a better idea of the “75 different Fresh Mozzarella products” they offer.
  2. Stolen Dough, the documentary, is available on a few streaming channels.
  3. There’s a report of the case that I certainly am not competent to judge on its merits. Still, even if Pizza Hut did not infringe on Anthony Mongiello’s legal rights, the company’s moral judgement leaves a lot to be desired.
  4. Would you like to see Italian mozarella di bufala DOP being made? Of course you would.
  5. Here is the transcript.

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