This Pizza Chain That Dominated The '70s Can Only Be Found In The Midwest Today

Among the heavyweights of fast food pizza chains, you've got your Pizza Huts, your Domino's, your Papa Johns (which has distanced itself from its controversial founder), and so on. But there are plenty of smaller, more low-key fast food pizza chains, like Jet's and Pizza Ranch. And then there's Godfather's Pizza, which was once a dominant national franchise but is now mostly confined to the Midwest. The story starts in Nebraska and ends up encompassing Mafia movies, Pillsbury, and one-time presidential candidate Herman Cain.

In 1973, an Omaha, Nebraska-based bar owner named Willy Theisen teamed up with Greg Johnson, the owner of a restaurant next to Theisen's bar called Godfather's Pizza. Soon enough, Theisen bought out Johnson and started the Godfather's franchise, which began to grow rapidly. As you can imagine from the name, the branding was inspired by Mafia movies like "The Godfather," with its eponymous spokesman, introduced in 1976, making "an offer you can't refuse." (Ironically, though that line was said by Don Corleone in the original "Godfather," the spokesman's appearance is based on Don Fanucci, who Corleone killed in "The Godfather Part II.") At its peak, there were more than 900 Godfather's locations across the country; it was the third-largest pizza chain at the time, behind only Pizza Hut and Dominos.

When Pillsbury bought Godfather's Pizza in 1985, the chain was starting to slip. The rollout for a deep-dish pan pizza had belly flopped, and sales were plummeting. To make matters worse, Pillsbury had trouble managing the chain, and its rapidly expanding competitors, like Little Caesars, were giving Godfather's some serious trouble. (It didn't help that those chains specialized in delivery, while Godfather's focused more on the dine-in experience.)

In 1986, Pillsbury appointed a new president to run Godfather's Pizza: a regional vice president for Burger King named Herman Cain. In a little over a year, Cain made Godfather's profitable once more, largely by closing hundreds of underperforming locations. Eventually, a group of investors, including Cain and executive vice president Ron Gartlan, bought the chain from Pillsbury to run themselves. But while Cain (and later Gartlan, who succeeded him as CEO) steadied the ship somewhat, Godfather's never quite returned to its glory days.

Today, there are almost 600 Godfather's locations in the United States, mostly concentrated in the Midwest, with additional express locations in travel stops. This may be a step down from its heyday, but at least it's not like Arthur Treacher's, the old-school seafood chain with only three surviving locations. As for Herman Cain, he briefly became the Republican frontrunner to challenge Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential election before a number of gaffes brought his candidacy to an end — which, and we're not kidding, he marked by quoting from the first "Pokemon" movie.