Tim Sparks wants to take Pizza Hut back to its glory days.
As president of Daland Corporation, he owns and operates more than 90 Pizza Hut restaurants around the country and he’s revamping dozens of them to look like they did during the 1980s — right down to red roof and red cups.
He also said bringing back Tiffany lamps is an important part of creating the vintage vibe.
“They really stand out,” he said. “I think that’s really part of that, and the checkerboard tablecloths really.”
Some classic Pizza Hut locations are adding Pac-Man machines, jukeboxes and another popular feature with customers: the salad bar.
Sparks said this push for a retro feel is working to pull in customers.
“We’re getting people that are coming from two and three hours away,” he said. “So, it was a way to help increase our business by taking people from miles and miles away.”
Sparks hopes that his back to the future vision will encourage other struggling Pizza Hut restaurants to hop on the trend.
“I hate seeing some of the franchises across the country suffer right now, but with another opportunity seeing our results, hopefully they’ll jump on the bandwagon and do the same thing, because I can tell you that it’s working for us,” he said.
A hundred and fifty Pizza Hut locations are a part of the throwback movement across more than 24 states.
In the D.C. region, there’s a classic Pizza Hut in Oxon Hill, Maryland and five more across central and southern Virginia, mainly in the Stafford and Fredericksburg areas.
Sparks said he would like to own more restaurants around D.C. if the opportunity arises.
“For the locations that we have, we’ll continue to march forward with the classic opportunities,” he said. “And if we find some more that we could potentially purchase, we may do that, as well.”
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