300 Pizza Huts Around The Country Will Close Permanently
Bad news for Pizza Hut fans around the US, as the news came through yesterday that 300 locations throughout the country will be closing permanently after one of their largest franchisees filed for bankruptcy.
The weirdest thing, though? I was eating Pizza Hut when I saw this story last night! My girlfriend severely overestimated how much pizza she could eat in one sitting by herself while I was working, and ended up getting a box that included two giant pies, boneless wings, and breadsticks, plus got some Cinnabon on top of that. So, it looks like I'll be eating leftover Pizza Hut for the next week and a half or so.
But anyway, that's where I was when I saw the news - NPC International, the franchisee that went bankrupt, will close about a quarter of its restaurants and will sell off the rest. The actual restaurant locations haven't been figured out yet, so it's not known if this will affect any of the Pizza Huts in Missoula, but they have said that many of the ones that close will be ones with dining rooms (Pizza Hut's been moving towards a to-go model for a while now, even before the pandemic hit).
The good news is that the company plans to work with employees at the stores that close down and will help them get jobs at other Pizza Hut locations. We'll have to wait to find out what stores will be affected, but in the meantime, I've got a mountain of pizza waiting for me at my apartment.