Retro Pizza Hut draws customers from hours away as 1980s nostalgia sends sales soaring

Florida's only Pizza Hut Classic, featuring the nostalgic red plastic cups, vinyl booths, Tiffany-style lamps and checkerboard tablecloths reminiscent of the 1980s, has become so popular that employees from other locations have been brought in to help accommodate the influx of guests at the Homosassa Springs restaurant.

"We have a big responsibility," Tim Sparks, president of Wichita, Kansas-based Daland Corp., which operates 82 dine-in Pizza Huts, told Fox News Digital.

"We always want to provide great service, and we always want to provide a great product. But when you get put under a spotlight like this, and people are coming from two or three hours away, you've got to deliver on that expectation."

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Pizza Hut started the Classic initiative around 2017, according to Sparks.

"They approached a few franchisees and said, 'Hey, we're thinking about doing this retro look. Do you guys want to participate in the test?' So I jumped at that opportunity," he said.

The first Pizza Hut Classic that Daland opened was in Dahlonega, Georgia.

"We flew out to see it once it was finished, and as soon as I walked through the door, it just really struck me," Sparks said. "I was super excited. I thought I was going to like it. I didn't know I was going to like it as much as I did. For me personally, it hit home."

Leadership changes at Pizza Hut eventually led the brand to move away from the Classic remodels, Sparks said, but Daland was allowed to continue with them.

"We did eventually run into a problem where we actually bought all the Tiffany lights that we could find," he said. "The brand quit producing them for us because … there just wasn't a big enough commitment from people to buy them."

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Some of Daland's Pizza Hut Classic locations still don't have the distinctive lamps, but renewed interest in the retro restaurants could soon change that.

"Now, because of the attention, we have five different vendors bidding to build those lights for us again," Sparks said.

Customer feedback showed that the throwback styling "really resonated with everybody," Sparks said. Daland currently operates 39 Pizza Hut Classic locations.

Since the Homosassa Springs restaurant was converted, dine-in sales have more than doubled, FOX 13 Tampa Bay reported.

"Tons of people" travel from well over an hour away to visit the Pizza Hut Classic that Daland operates in Tunkhannock, Pennsylvania, which has attracted significant attention on social media, according to Sparks.

"There's only 1,700 people in that town, and they will almost double the national average of Pizza Hut this year in sales," he said.

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Older generations with fond memories of Pizza Hut aren't the only ones drawn to the retro restaurants. Sparks said he encountered skepticism early on from those who believed the concept would primarily cater to baby boomers.

"That's where they were dramatically wrong," he said. "When we started to get a lot of traction with social media, these weren't 50- and 60-year-olds coming in and doing TikToks, right? These were [people in their] teens and 20s coming in and doing them."

As a kid, Sparks said, he was drawn to the music, diners and drive-ins of his parents' generation in the 1950s and 1960s.

"It wasn't something I ever experienced because it was gone by the time I became a teenager, but it was something I always saw in pictures and really wished I had," he said.

He believes younger generations may feel a similar pull toward the Pizza Hut Classics.

"I think it does take them back to a little clip of time and an era where, in their minds, things weren't as hectic," Sparks said. "It was a little simpler time."

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Sparks has also noticed another phenomenon when customers visit the Classic restaurants.

"People put their phones down," Sparks said.

"Once they're over the excitement, and they're taking pictures of the Pac-Man machine and the salad bar and the Tiffany lights … they set it down, and they start having conversation," he said. "I can't explain it, but it's super cool to watch."

While Daland won't necessarily convert all of its Pizza Huts into full Classic restaurants, Sparks said the company plans to introduce retro elements — including Tiffany-style lamps and red cups — at its locations. He also plans to bring back the old red curtains at the Tunkhannock location.

"That would really take it all the way back," Sparks said.