Yep. Seems like all chains go down the path of we need MORE profit! So they cut the quality of ingredients and just up the salt and fat content. Pretty soon it just tastes like garbage and they are shocked that no-one wants to eat their shit and they start closing down locations…
dad gives me a quarter so I can immediately lose in some claymation caveman game. i got a personal panned pizza for reading some books. there’s a pitcher of diet pepsi on the table, i think the condensation looks neat. The waitress vacuums up the straw wrapper my sister missed shooting at me with a rolling sweeper thing as she asks my parents “the usual?”
When I was in 6th grade a server at Pizza Hut accidentally poured boiling grease on my friend’s little brother. It was an awful injury that literally scarred him to this day. The investigation into the situation revealed that the server wasn’t provided the correct platform for carrying the deep dish, she was bringing out, because they were short, and busy. So they got a big fucking pay-out. They paid the medical bills, including long term cosmetic work, and therapy. They got a big cash pay-out, not sure how much, but it allowed them to recover from their failed business, pay off their loans, and set up trusts for their kids’ early adult lives. You know, pay for school, or whatever they needed to get a head-start on adult life.
One of the things they were given was a card that was used for internal corporate reasons. It was basically a free Pizza Hut card. The cashier would type the number into the register, and it would clear the bill. They were given free food for “life”, life ended up being about 20 years, ending with yet another decrease in their business. So, at least once a week, their family, and all their kids’ friends, would go to Pizza Hut for a big pizza party. During the summer we would often be given the card to get food when they had to be at their business late, which was often. I can no longer smell the particular fried bread smell of their pan pizzas without feeling a little nauseated. Sooo much pizza hut. Some times the local pizzeria would give us a few pies in exchange for letting them order things from PH not on their menu, like wings, so we could get some real pizza about once a week out of it.
Old guy here. I remember when Pizza Hut was great food. And so was Red Lobster. Don’t remember the last good Pizza Hut I had and it’s been since 2002 or so for Red Lobster.
Wherever I am, I stay the hell away from chain restaurants. They slowly chip away at quality until you wake up 10 or 30 years later and say, “Why am I still eating this bland crap?!”
I remember the last good Pizza Hut I had. It was a personal pan pizza I got from the Pizza Hut kiosk at my college’s student center, sometime in the '00s.
That Pizza Hut Express kiosk at college hit different! Maybe it was the small bit of childhood sticking around as the world is slowly sucking you into adulthood, but I have fond memories of that pizza and playing Puzzle Fighter in the little arcade next to the cafeteria.
I can tell you it's probably when they transitioned to frozen dough for the pan pizza vs. mixing it fresh each day. I will say that the frozen wasn't terrible, still better than other chains, but it was not the same as fresh.
i never realized how pillowy soft the fresh version was until i got the frozen one. the town i grew up in had dozens of other small towns around it with 3 pizza huts combined, so sometimes i would go back and forth between the frozen and fresh versions whenever they ran out of the frozen and stopped going completely when they all switched to frozen full time because it didn’t taste any better than the frozen pizza from the grocery store.
I can still just barely remember the days when Pizza Hut was an actual restaurant where you could sit down to eat and while you waited for your pizza, you could play some arcade games. Society has lost its way.
Over here in Europe, McD had some advertisements 2~3 years ago that now the buns are fluffier, the burgers juicier and saucier, the meat hotter. I did some digging and the calories stayed the same, meaning they basically put more air in the buns and more water in the patties to save on money, and to mask it all they put more sauce into it, which is the cheapest thing. I can’t go there anymore, it’s lost quality and you bite into a burger once and it looks like you’ve made out with the Hamburgler.
Oh and: McD over here used to be some real gourmet stuff. It’s extremely regulated.
I once was in the Netherlands on holiday and the McDonalds there had some sort of Italian burger, a soft panini style bun with with grilled chicken, mozzarella, tomato and basil pesto - that was amazing.
Oh yeah you’re right I almost forgot, in the Netherlands they have some premium burgers that are actually kind of good just way too expensive for what they are. In the Middle East I found McDonalds also much better.
In Germany imo it still sucks especially compared to other burger places that do fresh food.
Even more makes you wonder how much it costed 40 years ago to construct this building in their brand and style (must have been worth it at the time) just to abandon it later after failing to compete because they fucked their customers on quality.
Same with red lobster. When I was a kid they used to actually have lobster. Last time I was there like 16 years ago, they didn’t even have lobster. Like, it’s in the fucking name.
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