CONSPIRACY theorists claim that well-known children’s pizza restaurant Chuck E Cheese is recycling leftover pizza.
The pizza chain has denied the allegations, which started more than a decade ago but gained momentum in 2019.
What is the Chuck E Cheese Conspiracy Theory?
Conspiracies surrounding Chuck E Cheese pizza began circulating more than a decade ago, but gained momentum in 2019.
People posted pictures of Chuck E Cheese recycling their pizza on social media.
The photos show what appears to be a pizza with one inconsistency: the toppings and slices do not line up.
YouTuber Shane Dawson shared it The Washington Post that he noticed that the pieces of pizza didn’t fit together when he was eight.
“So I noticed this when I was eight years old or something,” he said in a video that has racked up 47 million views since it was posted in 2019.
He continued, “I thought, wait a minute, how come all the pieces are different?”
Dawson posted a photo of a pizza showing that some slices had a more extensive crust than others, while some slices were smaller than others.
Therefore, Dawson speculated that workers reheated old pieces of pizza and put them together to form new pizzas.
Dawson tried to prove his theory by visiting a Chuck E Cheese and ordering two pies, a photo of which he posted on social media.
Although his video doesn’t show him trying to talk to employees or peek into the kitchen, Dawson says of the unevenly matched cakes, “I mean, there’s no denying that, that’s crazy.”
The conspiracy theory that Chuck E Cheese uses leftover pizza to create new pies has been speculated for the past decade, but never proven.
What have former employees said about the conspiracy theory?
After Dawson posted photos and the video claimed that Chuck E Cheese was reheating old pizza slices, nearly 311,000 of his followers responded, with some saying they would never return to the pizza chain.
“I’m so lucky I’ve never been to a Chuck E. Cheese in my life,” one person commented, while another wrote, “Shane is the only one who can make talking about Chuck E. Cheese scary.”
More than three years after Dawson posted the video, comments are still being received from people who say they worked at Chuck E Cheese and are trying to debunk the conspiracy theory.
“I worked at Chuck E. Cheese right out of high school [2001]. We threw away the pizzas. Don’t repair pizzas with small leftovers.”
In a video titled Ex-Chuck E. Cheese Employee Responds To Shane Dawson’s Conspiracy, YouTuber Payden clarified what happened in the kitchen.
He said Chuck E Cheese requires each pizza to be consistent and have 12 slices, but harried kitchen staff, like himself, sometimes cut 10 pieces instead of the required amount.
“You just find a really big piece of pizza, and you just cut it in half,” he said. “That’s going to make it form a line that doesn’t go anywhere and things like that. It’s going to make all these lines look all funky.”
He added: “It’s the people in the kitchen who just don’t care.”
Did Chuck E Cheese comment on the conspiracy theory?
In the decade since the conspiracy theory came to light, Chuck E Cheese made no comment until Dawson’s video was posted to YouTube.
The video provided a platform for the theory and his followers began to speculate whether it was true.
Former Chuck E Cheese employee Samantha worked at the company in 2010 and 2011 and said Insider she had never seen pizza slices being recycled.
“I’ve never seen anyone do that before,” Samantha said. “It gets so cold and dirty so quickly that I feel like people would notice if they were recycled.”
In a statement to The edgesaid a spokesperson for Chuck E. Cheese: “The claims made in this video about Chuck E. Cheese’s and our pizza are unequivocally false.
“No conspiracies here: our pizzas are made to order and we prepare our dough fresh in the restaurant.
“That means they are not always perfectly uniform in shape, but they are always delicious.”