Pizza Haven was an AmericanSeattle-based pizzeria andpizza delivery chain, known as dial-a-pizza, founded in 1958 and opening its first location in theUniversity District, Seattle, near theUniversity of Washington. Pizza Haven was one of the first pizza companies to make deliveries. Restaurant employees used radio phones to relay orders to roving drivers who carried stacks of pizzas in warming ovens in the back of their jeeps and pickup trucks.[citation needed]
Ron Bean, the original founder, and a series of partners grew Pizza Haven into a chain of 42 restaurants throughout the Pacific Northwest and California. The 700-employee company also opened franchises inRussia,Poland and theMiddle East.
In the mid-1970s, Bean branched out, opening a second restaurant chain called Bean Pod Delis that offered baked goods and health food. By the mid-1980s, his partner wanted out so a portion of the chain was sold toPietro's Pizza, which itself had just been bought by theCampbell Soup Company.
By the late 1990s, increasing competition from better-funded national chains, leasing difficulties at some mall locations and what Bean describes in hindsight as several "bad decisions" combined to push Pizza Haven into filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. A missed tax payment then forced the company into involuntary Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 1998. The remaining stores were shuttered, except for the Pizza Haven and Bean Pod restaurants inSeattle Center Center House.[1]
The Seattle Center location closed in April 2012.[2]
