Pizza Hut closing up to 300 locations

Pizza Hut announces they will be closing 300 locations due to lagging sales and the effects of the pandemic

It would appear the days of eating a Pizza Hut pizza while sitting at a table inside one of the company’s iconic red roof buildings might be coming to an end soon.

It is being reported that Pizza Hut, owned by Yum Brands, Inc. which also owns Wendy’s, will be closing up to 300 of the chain’s locations. This comes after the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last month due to slowing business caused by the pandemic.

The majority of the affected restaurants are of the dine-in variety which is far from shocking in this new world of take-out and delivery that has been necessitated by COVID-19. As a result, the American landscape will now be littered with shuttered Pizza Huts and the hard to miss buildings.

Pizza Hut takes a hit after pandemic closings

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For years now Pizza Hut has been focusing more and more of their energy on the delivery side of their business. They could never really compete in the “fast casual” demographic and instead took on the likes of Papa Johns and Little Caesars with mixed results. It’s likely the pandemic just hastened something that was already going to happen.

So what will happen to all those empty Pizza Huts? Who knows. There used to be one by me that closed years ago and turned into an incredible Mexican restaurant with some of the best burritos in the area. Somehow I doubt most communities will be that lucky.

One thing we can be sure of if that this is probably not the last mass closing of a restaurant chain we will hear about before things get back to normal.