Bright future for Red Oak Pizza Hut

Red Oak Pizza Hut manager Jeremy Adams is setting the record straight about closure fears.
Earlier this month, Pizza Hut’s parent company, Yum! Brands, announced that it is closing 250 Pizza Hut locations that are underperforming across the United States. Adams, who has served as general manager for the Red Oak location for three years, said his restaurant is not one of them.
“I don’t believe actually any of the stores around here are closing. Most of them I believe are part of different franchises. With some of the stores that aren’t as profitable, they’re steering money away so they can put more money into the stores that are making good money and put money into those restaurants,” Adams explained.
Some of that money will be coming to Red Oak, and that means that the restaurant will be getting some new features.
“One of the things we’re getting is a new type of dough. It’s going to be airier, crispier, fluffier, and it’s been in development, I guess, for about three years now. They’re also working on getting remodels and stuff for a lot of the stores to make them look new. Our Red Oak location is we’re on a short list. We’re looking at upgrading the facility, getting a salad bar and stuff like that put in. The closures are not going to affect us in a negative way; it’s actually going to affect us more in a positive way,” stated Adams.
While around 250 Pizza Huts are earmarked for closure, there are more than 20,000 locations across the U.S., so there’s not fear of mass closures in the future.
“The brand is not going anywhere. The 250 that they’re closing is only around 3% or less of all the stores just in the U.S. We recently had a company meeting on it and they made it clear to us all that Pizza Hut is not going away, and despite the recent closures, new locations are still being opened. There’s also a bunch of news out there that we’re selling away from Yum! Brand, the parent company. If that happens, that just means they are selling to a new parent company that’s going to buy us, and then they’re going to want to rebrand it in their own way and do remodels and do all that kind of stuff.”
Adams was named rookie of the year by the company in 2024, and said that the numbers the restaurant is turning over are great.
“We were number four in the company for sales growth and we’re still continuing to grow. We’re over our sales growth from that year, so it’s been very positive here. We’re still continuing to grow, however, because we’re still not to where we want to be. We’re still just a little bit off of where we want to be per week on the goals, but I think we will get there, especially with, like I said, the new dough coming out and the new promotions and different things that we’re going to be doing,” Adams commented. “Our Way Back Wednesday promotion, we’re going to try to get an even better price point for customers to come in. I think we’ll get to where we want to be this year.”
The restaurant interior has a claw machine and other video games that can remind patrons of the Pizza Huts of old. When the location gets remodeled, Adams plans to keep that classic feel.
“I’m hoping to get the plastic checkered tablecloths back. I like the retro style. They’re going to do a paint job on the building, so I’m hoping we get to keep the red roof, I prefer that over the modern style that they’re going towards. I think a lot of the communities still prefer that because that’s what they’re accustomed to, whether they like that. With our video games and music that we provide, we’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback from that. Even just bringing back the retro-style red plastic cups has led to positive reactions,” Adams advised.
In recent years, there’s been a feeling of nostalgia brought back from shows that are set in the 1980s, and Adams said they’ve been trying to channel that, even bringing back programs that were available to youth growing up then.
“I brought back the Book It system here. We have it in all the schools around here now. I brought back the old table inserts, even the box supports they put in the pizzas. I remember as a kid, when we would open pizzas or whatever, we would want to take those out and we would play with them with our toys and everything else. I definitely feel that sense of nostalgia is a big draw for people to come to us,” Adams said.
Among the successful promotions have been the Big Dinner Box and the Triple Treat Box, and Wacky Wednesdays which features pricing from yesteryear. Adams said they’ve also been hosting special events and will continue to do so if they can get participation.
“I want to try to do some more of the video game tournaments like that to see if maybe we can continue to bring in more people from the younger generations. I want to get the younger kids in here, do after-school programs and different things like that so the kids have someplace to go to play and have fun,” explained Adams. “They don’t even have to buy anything. I just want them to come in and have fun. We have a bunch of older people, that bring in their own board games, they bring in Yahtzee, they bring in all kinds of stuff, and they’ll just sit at the tables and play board games all night long. That’s just fun. It’s good for the family. We are going to start doing karaoke nights again, as well as bring back bingo nights and our trivia nights. Bingo and trivia nights were kind of hit or miss. I think it really had to do with the day and the time of year, so we’re going to give it another try.”
Now that he’s been with Pizza Hut for three years, Adams said his favorite part of what he does is getting good feedback from the community that everybody is getting good food.
“My priority is hot food, fast food, delicious food, and fresh food for everybody in our community. I want them to think, where are we going to go out tonight? Let’s go to Pizza Hut. It’s going to be great food every single time. I won’t say we haven’t had some speed bumps on that. We’ve done a lot of retraining of people, and we’re still training,” Adams said. “Everybody is still learning. The restaurant business is always learning. It’s always fast-paced, everything is always changing. My team now is very good. We can deliver that quality of food that we want for every customer. I am definitely, definitely customer first. Every customer that has had an issue, if they reach out to me, I will try my best to fix it. Do anything we can to make sure they are happy every single time.”
Adams added the quality of everything that they’ve done has allowed them to totally refresh how they do everything in the restaurant.
“Everything is fresh every morning, the dough and all of our produce is fresh. Nightly, everything is turned and flipped and thrown away. We get the most positive feedback about that, about how the quality is just so much better. If anybody had a questionable experience before my time here, my recommendation is: try it out now. See the difference that we’ve grown into now.”