Let me paint a picture for you. It’s a beautiful sunny day, I’m on the last day of my weekend vacation in Fort Lauderdale with my fiancé, and I am excited as hell to eat at Pizza Hut before heading to the airport. We don’t have Pizza Hut in Boston, especially not any that still have the classic red roof, so this is truly a rare experience for us. We get dropped off by our Uber, step inside, and…. guys, it was so sad.
The nostalgia ended as soon as we walked in the door. There was a big empty space where the Pizza Hut buffet should be, with a few tables scattered haphazardly around the room. There were no servers, just counter staff, and we were the only customers in the restaurant.
Two small TVs showing soccer games were mounted in the corners of the room in a way that Michael Scott would be proud of. There were no arcade games, and definitely no jukebox.
Needless to say, I was pretty bummed out by the whole experience. This was not the Pizza Hut that my childhood memories are made of.
As it turns out, I’m not the only person nostalgic for the Pizza Huts of years past, and the company is making moves to bring that restaurant back. “It’s about celebrating where we came from,” Marianne Radley, Pizza Hut chief brand officer, told Nation’s Restaurant News this week.
This fall, you can expect to see the Pizza Hut throwback logo back in action in person when it debuts on pizza boxes during football season. On your TVs, the classic logo, which was used between 1967-1999, will be rolled out immediately in their ad campaigns. The throwback goodness isn’t just limited to marketing and branding though, and starting immediately, you can order a Cheesy Bites Pizza if that was your thing back in the day.
I can’t wait to see what else is coming, and have reached out to Pizza Hut for comment. Will the buffets be making a comeback, complete with kale accents? Will they be buying up former Pizza Huts & renovating them back to their former glory? Will we finally be getting a sit-down throwback Pizza Hut in the Boston metro area?
While I hope that they go balls to the wall with the throwback Pizza Hut campaign, Marianne Radley told Fast Company, “While our classic, red roof logo will begin to appear more frequently, we plan to use our red swirl logo and classic logo interchangeably.”
In the meantime, this is definitely a move in the right direction. Pizza Hut is BACK, baby!
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