Pizza Hut launches new innovation lab in Waterloo
It will function as a Centre of Restaurant Excellence to test concepts for roll out across Australia.
The restaurant’s interior has touches of Pizza Hut’s American heritage combined with a fresh Australian contemporary feel. Its features include an open kitchen, indoor, outdoor and bar dining spaces and a digital juke box.
With the opening of the Waterloo store, Pizza Hut will also reveal its branding evolution. ‘Pizza Pete’, the original Pizza Hut icon, has been re-introduced into the signage and internal designs.
Pizza Hut Australia innovation director Matthew Sawyer says the new business model has a ‘glocal’ philosophy: globally relevant with adaptations to suit the local community.
“Our new store will have food created specially to please the residents in the area. In other locations, we will tailor certain menu items in the same way. This reflects our approach of fusing global and local for our brand. We are fundamentally a people business with strong long-term relationships with our suppliers, internal and external customers. It is these relationships that have secured our success with our menu and operational innovation,” Sawyer said.
“We didn’t want to forget our heritage in this rebrand. For so many Australian adults there are fond memories of the Pizza Hut restaurants where, as a child, the experience was magical. We needed to maintain our links to that time – but it needed an update to remain relevant to a new audience,” Sawyer said.
The concept store has some of the offerings from the old Pizza Hut era which include a Dessert Hut with free-flowing ice cream, unlimited pizza during certain days of the week, dine-in, take away and delivery options (via electric bikes), an express lunch menu and a licenced bar area.
“This restaurant combines the things Australians have always loved about Pizza Hut with our vibrant modern casual dining culture. It will also allow us to respond quickly to our customers’ changing demands. This is the future of Pizza Hut,” said Sawyer.
