Inside the strange afterlives of Australia’s Pizza Hut restaurants

Remember when it seemed as though every suburb had a Pizza Hut? Throughout the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, the chain’s dine-in restaurants and their distinctive red roofs were a ubiquitous sight across the country.

Australia’s first Pizza Hut opened in the Sydney suburb of Belfield in 1970. Arriving just as dining out was becoming increasingly popular in Australia, the American chain quickly established itself as a national institution and favoured cheap-and-cheerful venue for families.

Its dine-in presence, however, has dwindled dramatically over the past three decades. While Pizza Hut still operates almost 300 locations around Australia, only eight offer dine-in service, and precious few occupy the iconic original premises distinguished by trapezoidal windows, brick walls and barn-style roofs.

But the buildings themselves haven’t entirely disappeared. Scattered across Australian suburbs and regional towns, some of the unmistakable former restaurants are still standing, albeit with new names above their doors and very different businesses operating inside.

Naturally, several have been taken over by rival fast-food chains.

In the Perth suburb of Gosnells, one former Pizza Hut now houses a Domino’s takeaway and a fish and chip shop. In the Sydney suburb of Gladesville, another has been divided between Domino’s and Subway.

Dining in at Pizza Hut was more popular in Australia in the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s.

According to Titanium Food director Suzee Brain, the appeal of these sites to rival quick-service operators is largely practical.

“Pizza Huts were the OG of pad sites – an efficient building design with loads of parking on a high-visibility street,” she said.

“Current QSR brands are favouring pad-site locations over shopping centre locations, particularly for their drive-through and 24/7 trading potential.”

The former Pizza Hut in Frankston, Melbourne, is now an IGA liquor outlet.

The existing restaurant infrastructure can also make the buildings considerably cheaper to repurpose, added Ms Brain.

“Having the kitchens there and permitted use already in place is a great help in converting ex-Pizza Hut sites to other food and beverage uses. Kitchen base-building works can run between $4,000 and $6,000 a square metre, so having these already in place helps reduce refurbishment costs.”

While their distinctive appearance can make the new business easy to identify, escaping the building’s former identity is almost impossible.

“The new tenant will always be referred to as, ‘You know, the one in the old Pizza Hut store,’” she said.

Former Pizza Huts can be identified by their iconic sloped roofs and trapezoidal shape. Picture: Used to Be a Pizza Hut

The weird and wonderful afterlives of Pizza Hut

Beyond rival fast-food operators, Australia’s former Pizza Huts have found some particularly unexpected second lives. One Queensland restaurant was transformed into Kaos Adult Koncepts, an adult store that retained the building’s familiar silhouette before it was eventually demolished.

A Pizza Hut in Queensland became an adult shop before being demolished. Picture: usedtobeapizzahut.com

In Preston, Melbourne, another former outlet became fish-and-chippery Blu on Bell, while Port Macquarie’s former dine-in restaurant was repurposed as a Liquorland bottle shop.

The transformations continue in Townsville, where the former Pizza Hut in Hermit Park is undergoing a multimillion-dollar redevelopment into PET24/7, a purpose-built emergency veterinary hospital featuring intensive-care wards and operating theatres.

In Ipswich, the local Pizza Hut subsequently became a Ray White office and then a solicitor’s practice before Elders moved into the building in 2022.

Its distinctive architecture remains remarkably intact. Although the famous roof has been repainted black, the red Elders branding offers a nod to the building’s former Pizza Hut glory.

Elders in North Ipswich took over the old Pizza Hut building in 2022. Picture: Elders North Ipswich

Growing up in Ipswich during the early 1990s, branch manager Danielle Gavin fondly remembers the days when her office was once a Pizza Hut restaurant.

“Pizza Hut used to run these reading promotions through local schools. You’d receive a free all-you-can-eat voucher after reading a book, but we used to pretend we’d read them just so we could come to Pizza Hut,” Ms Gavin recalled to realcommercial.com.au.

“Back then, nobody had any money, so we’d bring a couple of containers and take pizza home for everyone’s dinner that night. The amount of pizza we ate while those promotions were running, oh God!”

Ms Gavin said that, aside from the original restaurant bathrooms, the interior now resembles a conventional office. However, the building remains so closely associated with Pizza Hut among locals and customers that she has considered hosting a Pizza Hut-themed party in the car park.

“It’s an iconic building,” she said. “When people ask where I work, I say, ‘Elders.’ They’ll ask where that is in Ipswich, and I’ll say, ‘Do you remember the old Pizza Hut building?’ Straight away, they know exactly where I mean and start sharing their memories of the place.”

The inside diner style decor of Blu Bell Preston still looks Pizza Hut-esque. Picture: Blu Bell Instagram

Hunting the huts

Australia’s fascination with former Pizza Hut restaurants has been well documented for more than a decade.

In 2015, photojournalists Ho Hai Tran and Chloe Cahill travelled 30,000km across Australia, New Zealand and North America, tracking down former restaurants to discover what had become of them.

Their journey became Pizza Hunt, a published photography book featuring hundreds of former Pizza Hut outlets from the golden age of dine-in fast food, each reimagined for an entirely different use.

“My favourite is in Victoria,” Cahill told Good Food. “It’s a pool shop in Ferntree Gully and they’ve actually put it on stilts, shifted the whole building to turn it around and created a carpark underneath. Even then it still looks like a Pizza Hut.”

Seaspray Pools in Ferntree Gully put the old Pizza Hut on stilts, while retaining the iconic roof. Picture: Google Maps

More recently, New York-based Australian filmmakers Matthew Salleh and Rose Tucker released the 2024 documentary Slice of Life: The American Dream. In Former Pizza Huts.

During their travels, the pair encountered a colourful array of repurposed Pizza Huts, from Colorado cannabis dispensary and a Texas karaoke bar to an Illinois barbecue joint.

The website Used to Be a Pizza Hut also catalogues former locations around the world, complete with amusing commentary from founder Mike Neilson.

“You Aussies sure know how to make up town names that look like I fell asleep on my keyboard. Dandenong? Alright, well, whatever. My spell checker gave up months ago anyway,” reads a post documenting a former Victorian Pizza Hut that later became a souvlaki restaurant.

This former Pizza Hut was once a souvlaki store then later became a radiology clinic. Picture: healthcarelink.com.au

“For those who are unaware, souvlaki is a Greek dish consisting of probably lamb or something. And most likely some skewers. But, Greek as it may be, this place almost looks more Ikea meets Pizza Hut than anything else.”

Now occupied by Marina Radiology, the building’s barn-style roof provides the only conspicuous link to its Pizza Hut glory days.