000865 C&F Packing Co. Sues Pizza Hut Over Sausage Recipe

Chicago - A suburban family is seeking as much as $200 million from Pizza Hut because they say the restaurant chain stole their secret sausage recipe and gave it to other suppliers.

A jury already has awarded $10.9 million to the Freda family, owners C & F Packing Co. in Elk Grove, in a lawsuit filed against Dakota Dunes, S.D.-based IBP Inc., which sells sausage to Pizza Hut. Pizza Hut was dropped from the lawsuit six years ago, but was reinstated by an appeals court last Friday.

“It has been our contention all along that Pizza Hut was the mastermind and not IBP,” Raymond Niro, attorney for C & F, said Tuesday. “Now that Pizza Hut has been reinstated, we are going for the jugular. It was a willful misappropriation by the company and we are seeking between $100 million and $200 million.”

Pizza Hut attorney Patricia Thompson said the restaurant denies all the allegations.

The Fredas said they developed a process to make precooked sausage taste fresh and began providing sausage for Pizza Hut in a handshake deal in 1985. They said Pizza Hut passed on the secret to other suppliers without their permission.

In 1993, the Fredas filed suit and Pizza Hut terminated their agreement.

“In this business, what we did was kind of revolutionary,” Joe Freda Jr. said. “They were trying to save money on the research we had done.”

There are more than 7,200 Pizza Hut locations in the United States and 3,000 locations in 86 other countries.

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