What happened to all the closed Pizza Huts? These filmmakers found out

Reverend Tony Viglione says worshippers often recognise something very familiar when they visit his church for the first time: even with stained glass, the unusually shaped windows give away that the congregation meets in a former Pizza Hut.

“We sometimes call ourselves the Church of the Holy Pepperoni,” he says.

Matthew Salleh films at the “Church of the Holy Pepperoni”, a former Pizza Hut that is now the Church of Our Savior in Florida.Credit: Urtext Film Productions

For Florida’s Church of Our Savior, which welcomes gay and trans worshippers who have often felt like outsiders in mainstream congregations, it’s the perfect building. The old dining area has room for 150 chairs and, outside services, it works as a community centre for self-help and health groups.

“And we have three separate parking lots,” Viglione says.

In hundreds of towns and cities across North America, former Pizza Huts are living new lives.

The documentary Slice of Life: The American Dream. In Former Pizza Huts, made by New York-based Australian filmmakers Matthew Salleh and Rose Tucker, features a colourful array of them.

There’s a legal cannabis shop called Bud Hut in Colorado, a karaoke bar in Texas, a barbecue restaurant in Illinois, an oysters and seafood fine-dining establishment in South Carolina, and a restaurant called Taco Jesus – no connection to the Florida church – in Virginia.

Often the distinctive outline of a Pizza Hut – similar in the US as in Australia – is still visible. The red roof with a “hat” on top and trapezoid windows remain, even if the chain’s logo, checkered tablecloths and salad bars have disappeared.

Salleh and Tucker see these former Pizza Huts telling a story about a changing America. What was once a vast chain of franchised fast food outlets has become individual sites for the dreams of marginalised communities.

Pizza Hut was established by brothers Dan and Frank Carney in Kansas in 1958, with the distinctive look of its restaurants created by an architect as franchising took off in 1963. Gradually dine-in locations closed as takeaway and home delivery took over.

Reverend Tony Viglione and deacon Susan Charron in their Florida church, a former Pizza Hut with stained-glass windows.Credit: Urtext Film Productions

Salleh and Tucker, a couple from Adelaide who moved to New York eight years ago, landed on the idea for Slice Of Life after making two earlier documentaries on off-beat subjects – Barbecue (2017) was about the rituals of cooking meat on fire around the world and We Don’t Deserve Dogs (2020) was about the extraordinary ways canines influence our daily lives.

“We like these big tapestry stories,” Salleh says over Zoom from New York. “We’ve always wanted to do what we’d call our American road movie – travelling around and really capturing the spirit of America and all its weird diversity.”

Their fascination with urban decay and “dead retail” led them to online communities sharing photos of former Pizza Huts.

One is the website Used To Be A Pizza Hut, which focuses on what founder Mike Neilson calls “these beautiful structures” that are reminders of “the mediocre pizza that was once served”.

He catalogues more than 500 examples in North America, including a funeral home in Texas, a gourmet butcher shop in Kansas, a copy shop in California, a liquor store in New Jersey, another church in Augusta, a car rental business in Kentucky, a radio station in Ontario, a laundry in Wisconsin, and a strip club in Oregon.

“We like these big tapestry stories”: Matthew Salleh and Rose Tucker.Credit: Urtext Film Productions

Neilson has a droll take on what must happen in these churches: “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today near the salad bar to celebrate the union of two lovely people, Geno and Denise. It’s good to see all of the booths full and even a handful of people waiting to be seated. I am told that the wait will be no more than 30-45 minutes.”

Salleh and Tucker wanted to find out the stories of the people who had taken over these sites.

“We went around the country meeting these people – all very different – living these different lives,” Salleh says. “But what was so bizarre was that they were all doing it in literally the same architectural footprint.

“People had this 35 by 35 foot space. [The question was], what are you going to do with it? How are you going to build your dreams in this space?”

Among a cast of characters who sometimes make Slice of Life seem more like a mockumentary than a documentary is “Pizza Hut nerd” Charlie Gibb. “They may not be glamorous buildings,” he notes in the film. “They’re not the Guggenheim or anything like that. But they definitely fill something in our life that … we feel a warm feeling when we see them again.”

Tucker says the many Pizza Huts that have gone bankrupt in America were meant to undertake a process called “de-identification”.

Bud Hut … a cannabis shop in a former Pizza Hut in Colorado.Credit: Urtext Film Productions

“If you go out of business, you’re meant to take the ‘hat’ off the roof,” she says. “You’re meant to paint the roof any colour that’s not red. In some cases, they wanted you to get rid of the trapezoid windows and have rectangular windows. But a lot of them just shut down – ‘walk away’ – and they got left as a Pizza Hut.”

The filmmakers call them “hermit crab” buildings. “A business will move in until they need to move on to something else,” Tucker says. “They move out and leave the shell behind.”

New lives for Australian Pizza Huts

Australia’s first Pizza Hut, which opened in Sydney’s Belfield in 1970, went on to become a Korean restaurant before it was demolished in 2018.

But researching Slice of Life, Matthew Salleh and Rose Tucker discovered there are plenty of former restaurants from the chain with new lives in Australia.

The iconic Pizza Hut red roof, though this example lacks the trapezoid windows.

In Melbourne’s Ferntree Gully, a former Pizza Hut on stilts is now Seaspray Pools. And in Preston, another one has become fish and chip restaurant Blu On Bell.

In Sydney’s Gladesville, one has been divided in two other fast food operations – Subway and Domino’s pizza.

In Queensland’s North Ipswich, a former Pizza Hut is an Elders real estate agency. And in Coffs Harbour, NSW, one is a Liquorland.

Salleh says that many while American Pizza Huts were in towns, which meant they could be built on large blocks of land that allowed ample parking, Australian restaurants were mostly in the suburbs.

That meant the land was so valuable that they were often demolished for new developments, like the Belfield restaurant, rather than become “hermit crab” buildings as in North America.

Slice of Life: The American Dream. In Former Pizza Huts has a world premiere at Randwick Ritz during South by South West Sydney, which runs from October 14 to 20, and is released in cinemas on November 7.

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