Really around here they have made a come back
Could someone elaborate which empire this used to be, for the non-US users? 🙂
I think this was Pizza Hut?
edit: yup
I assumed this is a Pizza Hut based on the roof but they still exist so I’m not sure it fits?
I like the version of this meme that’s a picture of a building with an outline of a former Sears logo on the front
They still exist, but the Pizza Hut chain and it’s remain restaraunts are shadows of what they used to be. Pizza Hut was awesome in the 80’s. Now the old one near my house is a church.
Same for Olive Garden. Enshittification and placating shareholders came for them both.
…it’s mind-boggling from today’s perspective just how good the olive garden was in the eighties: we reserved a table for my graduation and it was a properly respectable dinner…
It’s hard for me to explain to people the unique tier that Olive Garden (and separately Pizza Hut) existed in.
There were many nicer Italian places than Olive Garden. It wasn’t pretentious at all, but it was nice and ubiquitous. Maybe a little better than PF Changs today? (Not that I’m very familiar with PF Changs). No one would laugh at you for taking a date there.
Pizza Hut was more casual by far, largely because you’d have kids playing arcade games and whatnot. Pizza Hut was more family oriented, but still more classy than most things we have today.
Maybe Texas Roadhouse is closer to accurate.
…in its prime, olive garden was very similar to red lobster: upscale suburban is perhaps a good description…
…these days they’re both well past their prime and i’m not sure a similar national chain comes to mind; it seems like only regional chains are playing in that space…
Our Lady of Unlimited Salad Bar
Idk which is more depressing, your church or the other person replying and their liquor store
Now the old one near my house is a church.
This guy is really into pizza.
The closest one to my house is a liquor store now.
An extinct civilisation called Heetzah Putt, rumoured to be near the lost city of Atlantis.
This belongs in a museum!!
This pizza Hut needs to be turned into a pizza HOME
really want someone to buy one, remodel it as a home to live in, then install a wood-fired pizza oven
I know at least one in our town that’s turned into a cannabis dispensary. Seems to me a smart business man would figure out how to combine the two…
Cheba Hut comes close and is a real place, but they don’t sell weed…yet
No weed, but they do have Koolaid, which kinda makes up for it.
There is one near me that is now a church.
The maintenance on those buildings at this point would be major. Probably not worth the investment.
With that logo and those buildings, they were clearly supposed to be named Pizza Hat until they changed it at the last minute.
More’s the pity, since “hut” never made sense for pizza and Pizza Hat sounds like the ultimate slacker Halloween costume 😁
In Germany it was always confusing but fun because “hut” just means hat
Hut always made sense to me. Making pizza in a hut… sort of a quaint name when thought of that way
You just solved history.
I did? Where’s my celebratory sash?
Guess they got out-pizza’d after all
fancy it up and the red still bleeds
Mmmm Cora
Looks like a Chinese buffet to me
That would be 3 different Chinese buffets over a 5 year period!
I can still smell the smoking section
Ours moved in to a strip mall and went pick up or delivery only. The old location is a really over priced shitty coffee house now.
Apparently Yum! Foods Inc (the owners of Taco Bell, KFC, A&W, Long John Silvers, and of course Pizza Hut), has been going around buying back a bunch of the old Red Roof stores (as they’re known internally, they’re actually a different district than a “regular” store right down the street, too) with plans to reopen them, salad bars and all.
So they didn’t end up winning the restaurant wars after all.
They only won that in the non US version. Here in the US it was Taco Bell
Guys guys relax
Taco Bell and Pizza Hut are both owned by the same corporate conglomerate that owns Pepsi, KFC, and every other fast food chain that only serves Pepsi.
The reference is to a old action movie called Demolition Man. In the movie there was only one restaurant that survived the franchise wars. In the US it was Taco Bell and in Europe it was Pizza hut.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demolition_Man_(film)#Filming
You can also read up on the Three Seashells.
You don’t know how to use the three shells, admit it
I’m not telling you. You can figure it out yourself.
TIL
(European here, obviously)
Pepsi sold them off a long time ago.
deleted by creator
No that was Taco Bell.
Both owned by Yum! Foods Inc, oddly enough. It’s like the Marines winning a war against the Coast Guard lol.
Yeah the full and complete story of the joke in this comment chain:
In 1993 there was a somewhat offbeat slightly Sci-Fi action movie called Demolition Man starring Sylvester Stallone and Sandra Bullock. Stallone plays a cop from the then future dystopian year of 1996 being frozen for several decades only to emerge into a late 21st century future where the entire world is rated G, the police have to be told what a murder is.
In one humorous aside/extremely blatant product placement, Stallone’s character is invited to a fancy dinner at Taco Bell. Making small talk with Bullock’s character on the way, he mentions that he feels strange being taken out to a fast food restaurant, and Bullock’s character says that Taco Bell “won the franchise wars” and so now ALL restaurants are Taco Bell. Cue the cast arriving at a fancy four-star restaurant that serves plates of artfully drizzled sauce with a futuristic Taco Bell sign out front.
That’s the original version that Americans are familiar with, at least. In 1993, there were effectively no Taco Bell restaurants in the UK (There were two; both at RAF bases that had attached USAF presences, and the restaurant was restricted to base personnel) so the joke/product placement was lost on the British public. I don’t know if they altered it in theaters (or if the movie got a theatrical release in the UK at all) but for television broadcast in the UK, the scene had its dialog redubbed to change the joke to Pizza Hut, a sibling brand at the time under PepsiCo’s fast food division. Which is why you will see people referencing the movie swear the joke was Pizza Hut rather than Taco Bell: Because in their region it was.
I love seeing places that were clearly something else. Plenty of places in old Pizza Huts. But I really wanna see the Wienerschnitzel in my city that operates out of a giant hot dog go out of business and then have, like, a cigarette store open up inside the giant hot dog.
A lot of the best taquerias in my area are in the old taco bell Spanish style buildings
Aren’t they growing back into Pizza Huts again?
