Everyone Wants a Pizza This Square Pie

When most people think of pizza, a round, fluffy crusted dish topped with red sauce, cheese and whatever other toppings they enjoy comes to mind—not a square. However, thanks to Buddy’s Pizza, a local pizza joint from Detroit, the square-shaped pizza is decidedly a thing. Buddy’s has been baking its pizzas into squares since before many of us were born, but the square pizza trend has been kicked into overdrive in recent history.

With nationally recognizable pizza brands like Domino’s and Pizza Hut putting their own spin on square pizza, will its originators be forgotten? Buddy’s Pizza created the famous Detroit-style pizza but was never interested in expanding nationally, allowing its innovative style to be developed and built upon elsewhere without receiving any credit whatsoever. In early 2018, Buddy’s finally announced plans to expand nationally in hopes of generating the respect it deserved as the Detroit-style pizza originator whose unconventional shape is taking the nation by storm. According to Eater, the square pizza marketplace inspired by Detroit is continuing to grow—and Buddy’s may be too late to the party to reclaim what was originally its own. 

Just like clothing, music or hairstyles, people follow trends, which history tells us are doomed to an ever-changing cycle, down to even the food we eat and the way it is presented. With a square pizza not possessing any meaningful differences from its round-shaped counterparts, it can be argued that the rise of Detroit-style pizza isn’t so much substance-related as it is Instagram-related. 

For many, phones eat first, evident in the growing impulse among today’s consumers to document the “uniqueness” of the food they’re eating in some way, shape or form. It is for this purpose that Detroit-style pizza has gained popularity across the U.S., at least in part—which makes us wonder, when food trends expand far and wide so rapidly, will we ever be able to trace them back to the source that supplied the originality in the first place?