The Launch
Little Caesars is rolling out a limited-time Cheesy Garlic Pepperoni pizza at a $6.99 price point, available at participating U.S. locations through December 27, 2026. The Detroit-based chain — the third-largest pizza brand globally by unit count — is deploying the new SKU through its Hot-N-Ready format from 4 to 8 p.m. daily, with additional ordering via its app and website.
The pizza layers a cheesy garlic white sauce and mozzarella with pepperoni and garlic herb seasoning, finishing with a toasted garlic Parmesan and Asiago crust. The dual-garlic build — sauce and crust — represents a deliberate departure from the chain's classic red-sauce base while maintaining the pepperoni platform that drives significant volume across the quick-service pizza segment.
The Strategy
The chain is framing the launch explicitly around flavor variety within a value envelope. "Pepperoni pizza will always be a favorite, but our guests are also looking for new flavors and more variety," said Greg Hamilton, Chief Marketing Officer at Little Caesars. "Cheesy Garlic Pepperoni gives them the best of both worlds — it starts with the familiar pizza they already love and adds a craveable garlic twist, all at the outstanding value they expect."
The $6.99 price point positions the LTO competitively in a quick-service pizza market where operators including Domino's and Papa Johns have faced consumer pushback on price increases since 2022. Limited-time offerings at a fixed accessible price have become a standard traffic-driving tool for the segment, allowing chains to test white-sauce and specialty-crust formats without permanently restructuring their menus. For context on how LTO mechanics are reshaping pizza-category economics, see our analysis of QSR menu strategy trends and the pizza segment competitive landscape.
Rollout & Campaign
National advertising supporting the Cheesy Garlic Pepperoni launched November 9, one week after the product's in-store availability date. The campaign centers on San Francisco 49ers tight end George Kittle, extending Little Caesars' existing NFL Official Pizza Sponsor positioning into a product-specific creative effort. Sports-tied QSR campaigns have demonstrated measurable lift in unaided brand awareness, particularly during the NFL regular season, which runs concurrently with the LTO's December 27 sell-through deadline.
Beyond the flagship pepperoni variant, Little Caesars is offering three additional Cheesy Garlic SKUs — Cheese, Bacon & Ham, and Mushroom & Onion — available through digital channels only, effectively using the app and website as a discovery layer for incremental check growth. Pricing on those variants was not disclosed in available materials. Prices are noted as higher in Alaska, Hawaii, California, parts of New York, Oregon, and Washington, as well as on third-party delivery platforms, where additional service fees apply.
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.
