Ahead of the U.S. military operation in Venezuela, the so-called "pizza index" phenomenon—an abrupt surge in orders at a pizza shop near the Pentagon, the U.S. Department of Defense building—was observed again.
According to the social media account "Pentagon Pizza Report (PPR)," which tracks pizza delivery trends near the Pentagon, pizza orders at a shop near Washington, D.C., rose abnormally around 2 a.m. on the 3rd. The account is run by an anonymous software engineer and observes late-night delivery volumes at specific pizza shops around the Pentagon. In the past, it has detected a pattern of surging pizza orders right before major U.S. military operations or diplomatic and security crises.
According to PPR, pizza orders spiked starting around 2:04 a.m. and continued for about 1 hour 30 minutes before the number of orders dropped back to "0" around 3:44 a.m. This occurred just before the U.S. military began airstrikes on Venezuela.
This phenomenon, known as the "pizza index," is a hypothesis that when a major security issue is imminent, Pentagon and intelligence agency officials begin overnight duty and orders at nearby restaurants surge. It is not an official analysis, but it has coincided with real events multiple times, drawing interest online.
In fact, during the 1991 Gulf War, Frank Micks, who ran Domino's Pizza stores in the Washington, D.C., area, said in a media interview that "right before the start of the war, dozens of pizzas were delivered to the Pentagon." There was also testimony that 55 pizzas were delivered to the White House a few hours before the U.S. military began airstrikes on Iraq.
Similar cases continued recently. In June last year, observations spread on social media that pizza orders near the Pentagon surged before and after Israel's airstrikes on Iran and U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
Meanwhile, early that morning, President Donald Trump said a large-scale airstrike targeting the Venezuelan capital was carried out successfully and announced the arrest of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife.