Hungry for nostalgia? Visit this rare ‘classic’ Pizza Hut in Northeastern Pa.
If you’re hankering for Pizza Huts of bygone days, you often have to travel back into your memory. Not anymore.
Imagine it’s a Friday night in 1985.
You just finished watching “Back to the Future” with your parents and cousins at the multiplex, and now it’s time to pile into the Chevy Caprice wagon with faux wood-paneled sides. You beg your dad to put the Wham! cassette in, one more time.
You’re going to Pizza Hut, of course, and the parking lot is packed. Inside, there are stained-glass lamps hanging over the checkerboard tables, a salad bar, and those red plastic cups.
The server brings out your deep-dish pies. They smell almost buttery. You grab your fork and knife because, well, that’s how you eat at Pizza Hut.
Can you smell it? Taste it? Ah, nostalgia.
If you’re hankering for Pizza Huts of bygone days or places like the “birthday room” at McDonald’s, you often have to travel back into your memory. Not anymore.
Pizza Hut has tapped into the power of nostalgia across the United States by resurrecting some “classic” restaurants. There’s one in Tunkhannock, a small town in the Endless Mountains of Wayne County, about 140 miles northeast of Philadelphia.
The Pizza Hut, which has been in a shopping center parking lot for decades but was totally revamped — restored? — into a classic location, complete with the red, angled roof.
“No touchscreen kiosks, no sleek redesign, just the classic dine-in Hut experience you thought was gone forever. It’s more than pizza. It’s a full-blown childhood flashback served with breadsticks and a plastic red cup!,” the Just Pennsylvania Facebook page wrote in May in a post that received 7,500 shares.
It’s not clear how many Pizza Hut Classic locations exist in the United States, and, oddly, the company did not return multiple requests for comment. According to The Retrologist website, the Tunkhannock location is the only one in Pennsylvania. There appears to be about two dozen in the United States, according to the site, though none in New Jersey or Delaware. The only New York location is in Potsdam, which is closer to Canada than to Pennsylvania.
A plaque on the wall of the Tunkhannock location, written by Pizza Hut founder Dan Carney, explains the concept.
“It reminds us of the Pizza Hut where generations of Americans first fell in love with pizza,” Carney wrote.
When The Inquirer visited early on a recent Monday, a lunch crowd was beginning to file in.
“It was probably 10 years ago that they turned it into a classic, and our business has really exploded in the last year,” said Paul Bender, a shift leader at the Tunkhannock location. “I don’t know how it happened, but people really began to notice. I’ve had customers come in from Wisconsin, Oregon, Michigan, and, obviously, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. We get a lot of people in the parking lot making videos.
Bender said the Tunkhannock location is still hoping for a jukebox and old-style video games, like the tabletop Ms. PAC-MAN.
“That would seal the deal,” Bender said.
Bender has wondered why more iconic chains haven’t created throwback locations, like Pizza Hut. He’s seen the power of nostalgia firsthand.
“Instead, it seems like more and more are getting rid of dine-in altogether, ” Bender said. “But I’ve seen grown men, in tears here, saying they came here with their father and mother.”
Last year, it was reported that a Pittsburgh-area Pizza Hut was bringing back dine-in service, though videos show that it’s only gone half-classic so far.