Pizza Hut is bringing back red cups, checkered tablecloths and nostalgia at three Northwest Indiana locations.
Plano, Texas-based Pizza Hut is restoring 1980s and 1990s retro dining experiences at 155 locations nationwide, including at 11 Indiana restaurants. Pizza Hut is bringing back nostalgic design features like vinyl booths, Tiffany-style lamps and arcade games at classic locations in DeMotte, Knox and Rensselaer.
Pizza Hut announced it was restoring the classic look at its restaurants at 425 N. Halleck St. in DeMotte in Jasper County, 1405 S. Heaton St. in Knox in Starke County and at 410 S. College Ave. in Rensselaer in Jasper County, as well as in Delphi, Fort Wayne, Paoil, Portland, Rockville, Union City and Warsaw in the Hoosier State.
Pizza Hut, which has also brought back its Book It summer reading program that rewards kids with personal pan pizzas for reading so many books, is touting the retro red roof dine-in pizzerias amid a surge of interest nationwide in nostalgia and comfortable familiarity. Parent company Yum also brought back the vintage potato wedges at KFC and launched the Decades menu at Taco Bell that revives favorites from the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and 2000s.
Pizza Hut shuttered most of its Northwest Indiana locations in 2024 after the local franchisee fell behind on franchise payments and ended up going bankrupt. Some of the Pizza Hut restaurants have since reopened, including in Hobart, Hammond and Merrillville. Others have already been replaced. The Chesterton Pizza Hut is now a Tacoverse, while the Valparaiso Pizza Hut was replaced by a Dutch Bros coffee stand.
The restaurant’s vintage look is so iconic that the Used to Be a Pizza Hut photo blog chronicles businesses with the signature red roof that clearly used to be a Pizza Hut. The chain pivoted away from the dine-in experience that used to pack its restaurants after Little League games to a delivery and pickup model like rivals such as Domino’s and Papa John’s.
