In the 1980s, Pizza Hut was much more than a home delivery chain. Its dine-in restaurants formed a staple Saturday night for many Australian families. Sadly, by the mid-90s, most of these pizzerias had shut down due to rising real estate costs and changing dining habits. If you miss the days of all-you-can-eat buffets and bottomless soft drinks, we have some stirring news – Pizza Hut is looking to relaunch sit-down restaurants Down Under. Hurrah!
It’s fair to say that Pizza Hut – once the king of fast food pizza in Australia – has been left in Domino’s dust in recent years. Superior online technoloies coupled with inovative hardware announements has seen Domino’s Pizza steadily increase its market share at the expense of its competitors.
In addition to buying out the struggling Eagle Boys, Pizza Hut is exploring a return to dine-in restaurants as part of its fightback. Instead of trying to match Domino’s online dominance, the chain is switching gears and appealing to Aussie nostagia.
Speaking to news.com.au, Pizza Hut’s freshly-minted CEO Lisa Ransom explained that the famous all-you-can-eat buffet could be making a return.
“There’s a great deal of heritage in the brand and we are looking at ways to do things differently. We get a lot of demand for dine-in restaurants and we’ll absolutely be looking at those opportunities moving forward,” Ransom said. “We still do have some restaurants but there’s not many anymore and I think there’s still life in that concept.”
“Not many” is an understament. Currently, there are only 15 dine-in Pizza Huts across Australia. During its hey day, the chain had multiple restaurants in every metroplitan city.
For those who are too young to remember, Pizza Hut’s dine-in restaurants featured an all-you-can-eat buffet of revolving pizza flavours, alongside pasta, salads, a dessert bar and self-serve soft drinks. You could also order delicious Italian subs, long before Subway launched in Australia.
[Via News.com.au]
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6 responses to “Pizza Hut Wants To Bring Back Eat-In Restaurants”
I have a local pizza hut still has the buffet and all you can eat pizza, i go there every now and again for lunch, best thing is that the deal is only available during school times so there are normally no kids there.
Have a local one that’s still kicking on life support. Go there every once and a while, when the $10 lunch deals show up on the shop a dockets.
Yep, there’s one here still too. Haven’t been for years though.
Didn’t help either they were putting everything from Peanut Butter to used cars into their crusts.
Jokes aside, as a kid I didn’t mind going when the money was there to my local pizza hut with Mum and my bros.
It’s just the quality of the place just plummeted. The buffet became bland, the desert bar variety just disappered but above all it was just under staffed.
My mother once came in asking for a coffee and halfway though had to call over staff member to ask what was going on. She eventually got it but some more time later another staff member came over with the coffee she requested the first time!
I finally stopped going to the local kiosk after the way they treated my mother when she tried to pick up a pizza for me. This was during my PhD days and she decided to get me a pizza so I could work longer and not have to cook a dinner.
And before anyone starts; she has arthritis and a laundry list of medical complications so while I still live with her, I help her out and pay a good share of the board so I’m not leach.
Anyhow, due to me being randomly allergic to sauces she orders just a plan cheese and ham pizza.
Simple, right? How could they mess it up?
She picked it up and while they did keep the sauce off she was far from impressed when she found less than eight small pieces of ham on the whole thing.
She went in to complain and basically the clerk’s attitude was “What do you expect me to do about it?” then turns to other customers, outright ignoring her.
Needless to say I have not gone near any Pizza Hut establishment since and now get my pizzas from Dominos or Town and Country.
I wasn’t there myself but when my mother came home upset and with the offending pizza (seriously, I saw the freaking thing and we even took a picture to ward out friends off) I decided that if can’t treat my elderly mother fairly they don’t deserve my patronage.
I gladly drive down to Kirra to the Pizza Hut on the beach…epic spot and still do all you can eat.
If you want to see an abysmal sad Pizza Hut dine-in restaurant complete with staff who couldnt care if you lived or died, tired old furniture, a buffet filled with yesterdays salads and cold two topping pizzas….then visit Pizza Hut Marion.
Support your local family owned/run Pizza Bar.