If they put one up near me I'll take the grandkids, nothing like red cups with coke, pizza and a checkered table cloth....

https://x.com/aakashgupta/status/2055900127773245935

Man, I wish. I loved Pizza Hut as a kid.

I've been to the one in Japser Georgia.
It's pretty close to 1984.

The Pizza Hut here in MQT went tits up 3 or 4 years ago. Building is still vacant. I bought 2 of the red cups before they went under.

All he has to do now is start cooking the pan pizzas the way they used to...oil the pans in morning and let the crusts 'fry' as they run through the conveyor oven.

Back in the 80s, the pizza quality itself was better - the crust, the sauce, and the toppings. I hope the owner is bring back the 1980s quality along with the decor. One of my highschool buddies worked at the old school pizza hut and then switched jobs to the delivery only pizza hut where he said volume was #1 priority, low input cost was #2 priority, and quality was a lower priority so the pizza itself was cooked hotter and faster on a conveyor belt (old school pizza hut did pan pizza in an actual pizza oven), they had to change dough to cook it faster, and they saved money on sauce and toppings too.

My Dad's side of the family loved pizza hut and so did my brother and I. Had dozens of meals per year at the one in our town and the one in my paternal grandparent's town. A couple of fun memories:

I grew up watching Grandpa, Grandma, and Dad sip draft beer while they ate their pizza. I always wanted to drink beer and eat pizza with them so when I turned 21 that's where I had my 21st birthday.

My grandfather was infamous for either spilling something on the table or himself. However, one time he outdid himself when he accidentally hit the spatula, it flew in the air over the top of the booth, landed on the guy sitting behind us, and put a nice big red dollop of pizza sauce on the guy's shirt. It was a friendlier time and the guy just laughed it off.

Coke? Pizza Hut was always Pepsi afaik. They definitely had Mountain Dew. And Galaga.

quote:

Originally posted by HRK:

If they put one up near me I'll take the grandkids, nothing like red cups with coke, pizza and a checkered table cloth

Looks like the Florida locations are all in the area north of Tampa.

I sure hope they aren't ruined by Changing Consumer Habits. I would love for them to return here.

quote:

Originally posted by Vgex:
I sure hope they aren't ruined by Changing Consumer Habits. I would love for them to return here.

Their success is driven by changing consumer habits, I'm seeing it with the young they're starting to hate their screens. I can't blame the kids there's no human connection on tik tok.

Man, I don't know what happened to pizza chains. I used to love places like Straw Hat, Pizza Hut, Roundtable. when I was a kid. Then they become less tasty with less quality. And generally rundown.

Honestly, even many of the proprietor owned stores, not chains, leave a lot to be desired these days. It's like there was a universal switch that set the deliciousness level of pizza to medium at best.

I'll be happy to see guys like Pizza Hut and pizza in general become the next fad (and longer) food, upping the bar with a rejuvenation of pizza quality everywhere.

Can't wait for the corrupted fad of ramen and sushi go away. Disgusting stuff, what is being mass produced in fashion.

Pizza Hut was a date night place as a young man for me.
Then I got married and moved away and it was sidelined by other things.
And other chains. The advent of the VHS brought date night into the home.

Now the empty nesters and some of their children are looking for that experience once again.
Which is really missing from modern places.

Yeah, I wish they would reopen ours. It had been here for as long as I can remember, and all of a sudden it closed as well as the one about 10 miles north of us. There is still one about 10 miles to the southeast of us but we haven't been there. They used to have good pizza, but the last few years they were open their pizza was just not that good. My understanding is that they used inferior ingredients. One just reopened about 15 miles north of us. It would be nice to have them back using quality ingredients.

Thanks HRK!

One 16 miles from me.

Guess who's gonna try it?

quote:

Originally posted by Ronin1069:
All he has to do now is start cooking the pan pizzas the way they used to...oil the pans in morning and let the crusts 'fry' as they run through the conveyor oven.

Yep those were awesome, miss them.

I managed a Putt Putt with an arcade while I was in college and it was right next to a Shoney's Big Boy, those were great times the early 80's.

My wife and I had our wedding "reception" at a Pizza Hut in 1973. The only people who didn't attend were the preacher and his wife. That meant 4 of us went to Pizza Hut.

Where can I find the list of locations?

quote:

Originally posted by Ronin1069:
All he has to do now is start cooking the pan pizzas the way they used to....

This has to happen or else all this retro-stuff is just going to be a flash in the pan and he's just delaying the inevitable. Atmosphere is nice but the Pizza Hut product of today can't hold a candle to that from the '70s and '80s.

quote:

Originally posted by Black92LX:
Where can I find the list of locations?

This article is about how one franchisee (Daland Corporation with over 90 locations) is bucking corporate. So part of what you want is the list of that franchisee's locations.

Which (happy to help) is right here, from the Daland website
Summary:
FL:5 locations
GA:6
IN:19
KY:8
MI:13
NY:11
NC:5
OH:3
PA:3
VA:11
WI:8

Status: Not clear.
I did not see anything explicit about how many of their locations had already been retrofit and the CEO in the video did state some of the fixtures were hard to get. The article said 80 were being done (of their 90+ locations) but why it wasn't going to be all of them or what the timeframe was wasn't discussed.

TL: DR - Might be worth calling beforehand.

Nothing for MQT on the list. Shame.