The Pizza Hut buffet is now a relic of the past, a symbol of a more utopian time in our history where you could go to your local Pizza Hut and see before you a seemingly limitless number of options. The world then seemed to make so much more sense.
Adorned between the bottomless serving trays of pizza and salad was a copious amount of decorative kale. So much so that Pizza Hut was once one of the largest kale buyers in the entire United States.
The thing is, nobody was actually eating the kale at Pizza Hut – it was purely for decorative purposes only. And prior to 2013, Pizza Hut was buying a ton of kale. In fact, in 2012, the company bought an incredible 14,000 pounds of kale, which is pretty incredible considering nobody was eating it.
Why Did Pizza Hut Buy So Much Kale?
Well, according to a Pizza Hut spokesperson, the chain was buying so much kale not just as a nice decorative garnish for its salad bars, but to cover up the ice that was used to keep everything cold, as was “common practice back then.”
Eventually, Pizza Hut opted to use refrigeration to keep its salad bars fresh, removing the need to buy an absurd amount of kale.
As a giant pizza chain that prided itself on its buffets at the time, it’s understandable that it would be purchasing so much of the vegetable, despite how much of a waste it actually was. Apparently nobody really cared about that back then. It all really makes you wonder too how much kale in total was being purchased back in the day by the industry in general.
Still, talking about the kale-purchasing habits of Pizza Hut will likely trigger some heavy nostalgic memories for people of a certain generation. For a lot of Millennials and Gen Xers, there are many happy memories of going to a Pizza Hut when it was a true sit-down restaurant, perhaps for doing especially well in their BOOK IT! program. People even have quite the affinity for those iconic red pebbled cups. Seriously, we freaking loved Pizza Hut restaurants back in the day.
And now you know why they were buying so much damn kale.
The Good News Is That Pizza Hut Buffets Still Exist!
The bad news is that Pizza Hut buffets in the United States have largely gone the way of the dinosaur. However, if you’re willing to go on an adventure, you could travel to one of these buffets still in operation in Australia and the UK. There might be more out there, but the thrill of the hunt only adds to the excitement of it all.
And as a final sidenote, I am happy to report there was still one operating in Athens, Ohio during my time at Ohio University from 2006 to 2010. It’s gone now, but it’s a more recent Pizza Hut buffet memory I will hold on to for the rest of my days. I really put a hurting on all the local buffets, actually, back when I could eat without consequence.
More Good News on the Pizza Hut Front
If you’re still mourning the loss of the Pizza Hut buffet, perhaps some other recent news will lift your spirits. The pizza chain – while still refusing to resurrect the buffet – is tapping into its other nostalgia reserves by bringing back the “Big New Yorker,” a favorite from 1999. This 16-inch, extra-large pizza features oversized, foldable slices, which is about 30% larger than the usual slices at Pizza Hut, and is meant to embody the spirit of the New York slice.
Now, get that Big New Yorker into a buffet setting with some of those red pebbled cups, maybe some of those stained glass table lights too, and we’ll be that much closer to a utopia.
