Hunt Brothers Pizza, the largest branded pizza program in the convenience store channel with more than 11,000 locations nationwide, has launched the Hot Honey Ultimate Pepperoni Pizza in partnership with Mike's Hot Honey, available for a limited time at participating locations across 16 states beginning July 27.
The LTO builds on Hunt Brothers' core pepperoni platform, loading 50% more pepperoni onto a base of 100% natural part-skim mozzarella, finished with the brand's proprietary Just Rite Spice™ blend and a post-bake drizzle of Mike's Hot Honey. The product is live in Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Texas.
The Strategic Logic
For a non-franchise c-store foodservice operator — Hunt Brothers charges no royalty, franchise, or marketing fees to its retail partners — LTOs serve a dual purpose: they generate incremental foot traffic for the host store and validate the program's role as a full foodservice destination rather than a grab-and-go add-on. "Every limited time offering we introduce is designed with two goals in mind: giving customers a reason to try something new and helping our convenience store partners generate excitement in their stores," said Robinson Hunt of Hunt Brothers Pizza. Hunt noted that Mike's Hot Honey has become one of the most recognizable flavor brands in foodservice, making the collaboration a lower-risk menu bet for store operators.
The sweet-heat flavor profile has migrated steadily from independent pizzerias into the broader pizza segment over the past several years. Mike's Hot Honey, the Brooklyn-born brand that helped popularize the honey-on-pizza application, now supplies operators across fast casual, full service, and retail channels — making its c-store debut alongside Hunt Brothers a signal of how mainstream the format has become. For c-store operators competing against QSR drive-thrus for prepared-food share, a recognizable co-brand can function as a low-cost marketing amplifier without requiring incremental media spend at the unit level.
C-Store Pizza Context
Hunt Brothers operates exclusively inside convenience stores under a turnkey foodservice model, a structure that keeps the brand asset-light relative to traditional franchise pizza chains. With 11,000-plus doors, it outpaces most named pizza franchises in raw unit count, though its competitive set is less Domino's or Pizza Hut and more the prepared-foods programs at Casey's General Stores and Wawa. That channel distinction matters for operators evaluating foodservice program ROI: Hunt Brothers' fee-free model means store-level margin on each pizza sale flows more directly to the c-store partner than a comparable royalty-bearing franchise arrangement would allow.
The Hot Honey Ultimate Pepperoni is available while supplies last, with availability varying by location. Operators and industry observers tracking convenience-channel foodservice trends or pizza segment LTO activity can expect similar sweet-heat iterations from competing programs as the flavor profile continues to index well in consumer preference data.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
