Little Caesars Big! Big! Spaghetti Bucket

Remember when Little Caesars sold spaghetti by the bucket?

We didn’t have a Little Caesars in my hometown when I was growing up, but that changed once I left home. The pizza chain wasn’t even on my radar at the time, but the combination of roommates and lack of money led me to check out the various coupon deals that kept landing in our apartment. The pizza and “Crazy Bread” became the cornerstone of my diet for months. Then one day, two of my roommates went out on a pizza run and came back with something I had never seen before: a bucket of spaghetti. Not just a bucket, no, not for ol’ Little Caesar. The diminutive pizza emperor served his spaghetti in a Big! Big! Bucket.

For those not familiar with the Little Caesars pizza chain, it got its start in Garden City, Michigan, in 1959. Founded by Mike and Marian Ilitch, a single store quickly grew after the first franchise was opened in 1962. It is probably best known for its two-for-one pizza deals, which started in 1974. This deal gave you a second pizza for free with each medium pizza you purchased. In 1979, they started using the slogan “Pizza! Pizza!” to drive home this offer. They would start national TV advertising in 1988, and this catchphrase, spoken by the cartoon Little Caesar, caught on like wildfire.

This is how I knew about the chain, even though I had never seen one before. Just from advertising, I knew it was an affordable food option, and when they started sending coupons to our apartment, we couldn’t resist partaking. It was one of my roommates who opted to bring home the Big! Big! Bucket while the rest of us ordered pizza. What he brought home, and the value we saw in it, changed our orders for months.

Pasta has always been a popular item at pizza places. Pizza Hut had been doing it for decades by the early nineties, and Little Caesars was selling it at the Pizza Stations they had in many Kmarts. With that experience under their belt, in the summer of 1993, they decided to add pasta to their 4,500 carryout locations. Initially billed in the Little Caesars style as “Spaghetti! Spaghetti!,” the dish debuted in stores in May of that year. The original deal was two medium pizzas with one topping and two side orders of spaghetti for $8.98. If you wanted to make it a large spaghetti, that would cost you $11.98.

That summer, they did lots of promotions and even local marketing events. They also announced immediately that they would eventually add a meat sauce option, and they would. My favorite promotions were spaghetti-eating contests, and a great example of that was at the Phoenix Zoo in Arizona. Contestants would sit on their hands and eat a small order of spaghetti. Winners would take home vouchers for free Little Caesars food, guided tours of the zoo, and other prizes.

By the end of summer, spaghetti seemed to be doing well enough that the company decided to introduce three additional serving sizes, all served in buckets. These buckets were supposed to add convenience to the ordering process. The bucket format allowed for easy carrying and warming in the microwave.

You could choose from four sizes: side order (no bucket), small, medium, and Big! Big! Prices were: $1.29 (side order), $2.49 (small), $4.99 (medium), and $8.88 (Big! Big!). The largest was by far the best deal for the amount of pasta you would receive. You would be looking at 28 ounces of noodles and 28 ounces of sauce. That was 3.5 pounds, AND it also came with an eight-piece order of their beloved Crazy Bread.

According to the company, the sauce and pasta were made at each carryout location. They didn’t specify how it was made, but I have read that it actually was just frozen, which makes a lot more sense than boiling big vats of pasta in stores.

I also read online that people who worked at carryout locations were not fans. Despite the bucket developing some loyal customers, it wasn’t as popular as the pizzas they were cranking out. Having to change things up and put together a spaghetti order could be very disruptive to the flow.

A few years later, with the success of spaghetti, they started to add other pasta dishes. These “Hot Pasta Dinners” included things like lasagna, stuffed shells, and manicotti. They were not served in a bucket, but instead were more like meal deals, served with four pieces of Crazy Bread and a 16 oz soft drink.

The Big! Big! Spaghetti Bucket had a good run. It might not have lit the world on fire, but in most locations, it held on until 1998. Some franchises kept it alive after that, but by the turn of the millennium, it was pretty much gone—lingering only in the buckets people held onto and the memories of bargain pasta eaters who managed to get through a week of meals after buying two buckets.

Why did it go away? According to an October 18, 1998 article in the Detroit Free Press, it was lack of interest. They further state that, “A number of franchisees said they were stuck with lots of frozen spaghetti. Company officials sat the spaghetti product is still available, and a good seller, in some store.”

Little Caesars wasn’t the first to offer pasta in a bucket, and they wouldn’t be the last. But they did try and take it nationwide and while it didn’t redefine the fast-food industry, but it showcased their knack for bold ideas and value-driven innovation. It was a quirky addition to their menu, offering a hearty alternative to their signature pizzas and proving that pasta could have its place in a carryout-focused operation. While it didn’t become a permanent fixture, it left its mark as a memorable example of how Little Caesars was willing to step up and experiment in an attempt to stand out in the crowded world of quick and affordable food.