In the ’90s, a guy who owned a bunch of Domino’s Pizza restaurants in Washington, DC, coined the term Pizza Meter. It describes how journalists keep an eye on pizza orders to the CIA and the Pentagon. When orders increase, you know something is happening, because people are working late—orders supposedly doubled before the US invasion of Panama.
When Operation Desert Storm launched in January 1991, the Chicago Tribune published an account of a D.C. pizzeria owner who was able to predict that military action in the region was imminent, thanks to spikes in his sales. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, who was a Pentagon correspondent at the time, supposedly remarked, “Bottom line for journalists: Always monitor the pizzas.”