Pizza Hut #26284/#407034, Southgate, Michigan

This post will look at retail in Southgate, Wayne County, MI.

This is the first time we've featured a restaurant on Southeast Michigan Retail. We'll appropriately start off our restaurant posts with a dying breed which is ever inching closer to extinction, and the latest local fatality from this movement. 

Former Pizza Hut #26284/#407034

14550 Fort Street, Southgate, MI

Driving distance and time from downtown Detroit: 15.4 miles, approx. 20 minutes

This Pizza Hut opened in 1976, built in the chain's all-too-familiar red roof design, or if you want more technical stuff, built in the Series 35 prototype of the red roof design. Now do note that all photos in this post were taken in the summer of 2018, I just wanted to point that out since, as you'll read below, you won't be able to get any pizza from this address, as it has, of course, fallen victim to Pizza Hut's aggressive shutdowns of their dine-in red roof locations in favor of delivery/carryout-only stores.

Pizza Hut corporate sold this restaurant, along with 88 other corporate-owned stores in Southeast Michigan, in 1998 to Wolverine Pizza, a franchise owned by renowned African- American entrepreneur La-Van Hawkins, likely as a result of financial measures following Pizza Hut's 1997 spin-off from PepsiCo into Tricon Global, a company that would later become today's Yum! Brands.

Wolverine Pizza would later be sold in 2003 to GE Capital for more than $95 million. GE Capital, would, in turn, sell this restaurant to J&B Pizza in 2005. J&B Pizza would itself sell this restaurant to Greenfield Park, Quebec, Canada-based Redberry Resto Brands (now Redberry Restaurants), who would be the franchise owner of this store until it's last day.

In 2008, this restaurant was updated to replace the (now current again) old Pizza Hut logos with the then-current ones while also adding WingStreet menu items.

On April 19, 2020, this Pizza Hut store closed it's doors for the final time. It is unknown if a delivery/carryout-only store in close proximity will replace it, but we'll just have to find out after the current pandemic is behind us.

This Pizza Hut was built with the red roof parallel to Fort Street due to the narrow depth of the property, occupying the entire block between Veronica and Mercier Streets, squeezed in between Fort Street and homes on both Veronica and Mercier. The brick architecture somewhat blends in nicely with the predominantly brick architecture of the nearby buildings, with it's location in Old Homestead, a tony neighborhood of Southgate.

Stepping inside from the west entrance, the interior still pretty much looks like the 1970's and 1980's, with earthtone colors dominating, and especially the wood that's seen here.

Just a short distance away is the counter from which you obviously ordered your pizzas. The kitchen is visible beyond, and in the background is the employee door.

Our final interior photo shows the dining room, which has gotten some technological upgrades since the restaurant opened in 1976. Notice the orange tiles bumping out on the bottom right - that was where the salad bar was located until Pizza Hut decided to do away with salad bars.

And now that we've looked at a classic Pizza Hut that's now out of business and become a UTBAPH, until next time...

7/2/2020: Read the sequel!