At the intersection of vintage toys, food, and design, you can find people missing the days when fast food restaurants were iconic, original, and really stood out. For example, back in the 1990s, going to Pizza Hut—among other restaurants—was an experience that many remember fondly. For some internet users, it felt like they were home.
Luckily for them, nostalgia is pretty good business, and companies are responding to their customers’ wants and needs.
CBC News reports that Pizza Hut is bringing dozens of its locations “back to its retro glory days” in the United States.
As per CBC, a crowded pizza market has led to Pizza Hut’s sales falling. However, the change toward retro appears to be popular in spots where the overhauls have already happened. According to Tim Sparks, the president of Daland Corporation, a Kansas-based franchise that oversees 94 Pizza Hut locations in the US, the changes have “been very positively received in the communities where we’ve converted them.”
“These restaurants were built around dining-room experiences—families gathering after events, sports teams celebrating, kids enjoying arcade games like Pac-Man and even waiting for songs on the jukebox,” Sparks told CBC News.
“It is a very different experience from simply picking up or having a pizza delivered.”
Not every restaurant can be converted, though. As per the New York Times, only certain models in certain markets are considered eligible for the 1990s decor. Meanwhile, Pizza Hut provides franchises with a specific guidebook for how to do the overhaul.
Obviously, it is not just pizza that people miss. Other companies, aside from Pizza Hut, are leaning into the nostalgia trend, too.
For example, recently, Tim Hortons took a “trip down memory lane” by bringing back its retro coffee cups for National Coffee Day. The company also temporarily brought back two retro donuts.
Meanwhile, McDonald’s also recently relaunched its Monopoly game, a “core memory” for some of its customers.
In other areas, more and more people are exchanging smart tech for analog, retro, and older digital devices. Digital and film cameras, DVDs, vinyl records—they are all popular again, as consumers want to slow down and change how they interact with the world.
“We want to go back to the warmer, more secure memories of childhood when everything seemed simple and safe," Grant Packard, an associate professor of marketing at York University in Toronto, told CBC.
Meanwhile, Matthew Philp, an associate professor of marketing at Toronto Metropolitan University, notes how nostalgia is a “warm safety blanket” when people are constantly exposed to negative information in the present.
