Pizza Hut in Homosassa Springs revives classic 1980s look, sees sales soar

HOMOSASSA SPRINGS, Fla. - A restaurant franchisee is bringing back 1980s nostalgia by transforming a Homosassa Springs Pizza Hut into a retro dining room complete with vintage decor and traditional menu favorites.          

"This is one of my favorite things, a pan pizza right out of the oven," Tim Sparks, the CEO of Daland Corporation, said. "It brings back great memories, right? This is my childhood."

At a Pizza Hut along Suncoast Boulevard, it's not just the pizza that takes you back. 

It's the hut itself. 

Homosassa Springs retro Pizza Hut

What they're saying:

"One of the first things everybody sees is the checkerboard tablecloth," Sparks said. "As soon as you walk in the door, you get that checkerboard all over the room." 

For eight years, Sparks — the owner of 82 dine-in Pizza Huts — has been making old, new again. 

Thirty-nine of those 82 are now called "Pizza Hut Classic." 

There are salad bars, vinyl booths and Tiffany-style stained-glass lights above each table. 

"They're part of our heritage," Sparks said. "It feels like Pizza Hut because of those lights." 

And yes, there are the glistening red cups, which Sparks says are no empty gesture.

"We're getting guests who are coming [from] an hour or two hours away. And a lot of people truly don't believe that."

Pizza Hut Classic transformation

Dig deeper:

Their attempt to capture the past is working. 

During the work week in July, the restaurant in Homosassa Springs set a sales record. 

In fact, dine-in sales have more than doubled. 

And that's because the people who come here are getting more than just pizza.

"It's wonderful, it's hard to find places like this anymore," said one guest. 

Sparks argues that their packed dining rooms are a sign of desperation amongst a pizza-loving public that craves real life.  

"It seems to create conversation," Sparks said.

Screen-free family dining

Big picture view:

Connecting with the past, Sparks says, is really about connecting with each other. 

"We don't seem to have a lot of family time, group time together where we're not staring at screens… and it seems like when people come in and this nostalgia takes them back to a time we didn't do that," Sparks said. "But I look around right now nobody is looking at a phone."

To this point as a brand, Pizza Hut has focused on small, rural communities for its retrofitted classic dine-in restaurants. 

Old-school pictures line the walls, and reminders of childhood are everywhere. 

Dale Jones manages a half-dozen Pizza Huts in Citrus and Hernando counties, and says the Book It! program, which rewards kids with pizza for reading, is a key aspect of the nostalgia they've built.

"People like myself who were Book It! kids in a different generation are now bringing their kids in," Jones said. 

For Sparks and his Daland Corporation, going retro has become urgent, and he expects it'll be in cities soon. 

Retro decor supply shortage

What's next:

But it moved so quickly that there's now a holdup. 

The lights are everything, which is a blessing and a curse. 

"We couldn't get them anymore; they had stopped producing these. And now [with] the attention the [Pizza Hut] Classics have gotten, we have five people bidding to produce these for us again," Sparks said. 

Over four decades, Sparks has worked every job at Pizza Hut, from dishwasher to driver to chief executive.

Sparks’ project has brought him back to the beginning too. 

"A lot of people mention the smell, right?" Sparks said. "They come in and they are kind of like, ‘Wow, it smells like what I remembered.’"

Pizza is once again doing what it does best. 

"There's a table of 10, a table of 12. Loud, having fun, not a phone in sight, right?" Sparks said. "And that's how I remember it, and I think that's what people need."

So far, the restaurant in Homosassa Springs is the only Pizza Hut Classic in Florida, but here is a list of all the ones around the nation.

The Daland Corporation plans on more conversions soon.

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