Makin’ It Retro

[Red-checkered tablecloths are obviously a must as well.]
Growing up, my family used to drive many hours to visit relatives. As a child affected with car sickness, I couldn’t pass the time by reading. As a result, those trips felt painfully long. One upside, however, was that we would often stop at Pizza Hut for lunch. The chain offered a lunch deal where your personal pan pizza had to arrive within five minutes, or your next one would be free.1
They even created a custom timer for it, which you can purchase on eBay if you’ve got 300 dollars and no sense:

I seem to recall some shenanigans with when exactly the timer arrived at the table, but regardless, they aimed to deliver your food fast and hot. Better still, watching those seconds tick down gave my brother and me something to be entertained by as we waited to eat.2
I don’t know if we ever scored a free pizza. As kids, we certainly weren’t paying anyway. Nevertheless, the hope of beating Pizza Hut sprang eternal all the same.

As an adult, however, the restaurant has not been a part of my life. They’ve shifted to a focus on take-out and delivery, and I’ve shifted to eating higher-end pizza. I don’t think I’ve been to a Pizza Hut in at least a decade, and probably much longer.

Apparently, the chain is seeking to lure folks like me back in, with an astounding “Pizza Hut Classic” concept. These restaurants are throwbacks to the Pizza Hut of my childhood.

The interior design and menu had been painstakingly engineered to replicate the Pizza Huts of the 1980s and ’90s, when families and friends settled into red-vinyl booths on a Friday night to eat deep-dish pan pizza and drink Pepsi from red plastic cups.

If I ever find myself near a Pizza Hut Classic, you can bet I’m going to book it right on in to chow down on some acceptable pizza while drinking soda from a red plastic cup.

Footnotes:

The oh-so-’80s ad is archived here. ↩︎

I would be remiss if I failed to note that when my dad joined us on these road trips, we couldn’t participate in this deal. While my mother, brother, and I would always order a personal pan pizza, my dad had a love for Pizza Hut’s spaghetti bolognese. Ordering that meant our whole table was ineligible for the 5 minute pizza deal. I’m still working on forgiving him. ↩︎

Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/03/dining/pizza-hut.html?unlocked_article_code=1.TVA.DhJ7.073NCxeQ7vrV&smid=url-share