No One Out-Buffets The Hut

Pizza Hut

179 E. Cocoa Beach Causeway, Cocoa Beach, FL

     Once an icon of the American roadside, it's becoming a sad reality that the famed red-roof Pizza Hut is becoming harder and harder to find. While sitting down for a family pizza night under one of the famous stained glass lamps was a Friday night tradition for many, unfortunately, the pizza business has changed. With delivery and carry-out options taking over the vast majority of pizza sales across the United States in recent years, dine-in pizza began a slow decline. While finding a freestanding, red-roofed hut isn't super uncommon yet, these are getting much rarer by the day. As the years have worn on, there's become such an increase in discarded huts out there, that's it's become a thing to pick out UTBAPHs (Used to be a Pizza Huts) in towns across the nation, seeing how these iconic buildings have been repurposed in countless ways. While Pizza Hut and its franchisees have been slowly adapting to changes in the pizza industry and converting/relocating many older locations into carry-out only ones, a red hut-shaped roof will sometimes peek out in the distance behind a bank and a gas station, taking us back to a day when it was fun to go out for a pizza - much like we can still do here in Cocoa Beach. 

     Pizza Hut and its red roof found its way to Cocoa Beach in 1986, building on a small piece of land at the end of the Route 520 Causeway, just two blocks from the beach. Pizza Hut's placement makes it a very convenient place to stop for lunch or dinner after a long beach day, and that's probably a contributing factor to the longstanding success of this location. Being at the end of the main causeway into Cocoa Beach, the stretch of beach just steps from this building is one of the busiest in town, and Pizza Hut is the first thing you see pulling out of the parking lot. Between the visitors and the locals, this place has been able to keep itself going for 35 years now. The building itself has seen some minor upgrades since it first opened, but it still has the classic Pizza Hut feel to it.

     While the red-roof hut buildings are getting harder to find, what got me up here to visit this particular location was to experience another dying Pizza Hut feature: the lunch buffet. While fairly common back in the day, the Pizza Hut lunch buffets have begun to slip into obscurity. From what I understand, the lunch buffet isn't even an official Pizza Hut concept anymore, but franchisees that still have buffet equipment in their older locations can still offer one if they wish. Since the buffets are semi-unofficial these days, Pizza Hut's website doesn't mention if a location still offers one, so you have to do a little digging to figure out where the operational Pizza Hut buffets are. Interestingly, I never knew the Cocoa Beach Pizza Hut had a buffet until a year or so ago. I was originally planning to drive to St. Cloud to their Pizza Hut buffet for this post, until I found pictures on Google showing there was still one in Cocoa Beach (as of January 2020, anyway, when I made this visit - the last Pizza Hut buffet in Brevard County). That discovery cut my drive in half mileage-wise, which I was happy about! When I made my Pizza Hut buffet visit in January 2020, the remaining buffets in Central Florida (that I knew of) were this one, St. Cloud, New Smyrna Beach, S. OBT in Orlando (across from the Florida Mall), and Haines City (although there may have been a few more floating around in the greater Orlando area, but those listed were the ones I found online in my buffet search). However, with all the pandemic stuff going on, I have no idea what the fate of any of the Pizza Hut buffets locally have been since, not even here in Cocoa Beach, so I can't say with certainty if any of them are still open at all. Buffets in Florida are open again at full capacity, so there's a chance some may have been revived, but I don't know (and the fact Pizza Hut wasn't officially on-board with the concept any more doesn't help the fate of these any). At least I got to visit this one in January 2020, back before the world fell apart, and the fate of the buffets went up in the air.

     Anyway, my babbling aside, I'm sure we're all feeling a little hungry right about now, so let's head inside and eat:

Photo courtesy of Google Maps

      Stepping inside, I wouldn't call the dining room the best example of modern decor, but it has seen upgrades from the days of Pizza Hut's trapezoid windows, wood paneling, and stained glass lamps (as fun as all those things were). Still though, this place has that cozy, warm feeling a Pizza Hut dining room has always had.

Photo courtesy of Google Maps

     Anyway, stepping through the front doors, the dining area expands out to your left, with the buffet bars straight ahead. To the right is a short hallway to the bathrooms, with the kitchen just beyond that. The photo above looks from the dining room back toward the entry area, where the hostess stands to bring you to a table.

Photo courtesy of Google Maps

     Here we have a better view of the front of the dining room, looking toward the buffet. The photo above, as well as the two before it, I took from Google Maps, as I didn't get any spectacular overview shots of the dining room myself. Even if I did manage to pull off a shot like this, my phone camera would have taken in all the glare from the sun shining through the windows and done something funky with the lighting, so the photo wouldn't have turned out as crisp as the one above. While we've had these nice overview shots to start off our look at the interior, we now return to my funky photos for the remainder of this post:

     Speaking of my phone doing strange things with the lighting, here's a perfect example of that! Looking toward the main entrance, my phone washed out a lot of this picture from the glare, leading to a rather dark looking scene near the buffet. Immediately to my left from this vantage point was the kitchen, as well as the counter with the cash register.

     Before we get to the food, we'll take a quick walk around the dining room. Pictured here is the back of the dining room, looking away from the buffet. Rows of booths line the front and back of the dining room, as well as the partition in the middle.

     Behind the partition was a space with some larger tables, reserved for bigger groups.

     While I was here, a large group of construction workers from a nearby project came in on their lunch break, filling up one of the big tables back here, which was certainly a nice little rush for the place. Besides the construction workers, there were a few other people dining in as well, the entire dine in crowd arriving for the buffet. Without the buffet, I really don't know how much of a dine-in business this place would have in the early afternoon hours, although the pictures on Google seem to suggest the dine-in business does pick up going into the dinnertime/evening hours, probably when the beaches begin to clear out for the night. I believe the time between the noon lunch rush and the evening dinner hours are some of the slowest during the day for restaurants, with Pizza Hut coming up with the buffet concept to not only take advantage of the lunch rush, but also boost business during the slower afternoon hours. A lunch buffet certainly seems more attractive to an individual on lunch break than having to order a whole pizza (and in turn, having to do something with the leftovers).

     Now that we've had our taste of the dining room, it's time we get to taste the food itself! The lunch buffet consisted to these two food bars near the restaurant's front entrance - one bar for the hot food, and the other for the cold salad bar.

     While it looks rather small and is only offered for two hours a day, the staff here was doing a really good job of keeping the buffet full and replenishing food that ran out. In scouring Google reviews of other Pizza Hut buffets online, I know one if the biggest complaints is that Pizza Hut has a terrible time of keeping the buffet well-stocked. I'm pleased to say that wasn't the case the entire time I was here, and I was quite impressed at how well run the buffet at this location was.

     The hot food bar consisted of six different pizzas, baked noodles, and garlic bread sticks from what I remember. Of the six pizzas, one was a dessert pizza, one was plain cheese, and the other four had various toppings that would continuously change out as the pizzas were replaced.

     Turning our attention to the salad bar, well, it's a pretty standard salad bar. Some salad mix, additional toppings, and dressing made up the spread here, with a really good pre-mixed Cesar salad in the bowl at the top left corner of the image.

     Now that we've piled our plates high, let's head over to our table. I was seated at a booth not too far from the front door, I believe the booth behind the one pictured here. I actually took this photo to showcase some of the local flare decor on the walls, which there was no shortage of in this place! The wall space between the windows was covered in various pictures and knickknacks relating to the beach, Florida, local sports teams and colleges, and surfing (which Cocoa Beach is famous for).

     Settled in at our table, here's one last look at the buffet before we dig in:

     I visited this place with the intent to share my experiences with you guys, so of course I had to sample a little bit of everything (yes, that was how I justified all that pizza!). A food photographer I am not, but the way I put everything on the plate makes it seem like I was trying to do something fancy, which I wasn't going for - that was just a coincidence!

     If you couldn't tell by now, pizza and pasta is a huge weakness of mine, so I have no problems going out and sampling some for the sake of the blog! Like I said before, for what looked like such a small buffet, the variety and quality was very good, and I liked how the pizza toppings kept changing out to keep the variety interesting. For my second plate I went a bit more adventurous with my topping choices, getting a slice of Hawaiian pizza and one with sausage and banana peppers on it. I know a lot of people think putting pineapple on pizza is weird, but I like it.

     While I really enjoyed my lunch, I can't forget about dessert! On the buffet was a dessert pizza, which was half apple topping, half strawberry. The slice I took was from the apple side, and is essentially of the same style as the dessert pizza Cici's usually puts out on their buffet (if you're familiar with that). Speaking of Cici's (and while we're on the topic of pizza buffets), 2020 wasn't very kind to them either. It was just announced earlier this week that they declared bankruptcy, however, their bankruptcy plan was initiated as part of a pre-packaged, expedited bankruptcy deal with a new owner already in mind. While it sounds bad, Cici's will continue to operate as part of their turnaround plan, with no mass closures or anything like that as a result of the bankruptcy (although 77 of Cici's nearly 400 locations prior to the pandemic did succumb to the pressures of 2020). While pizza buffets were facing issues prior to 2020, the pandemic restrictions really didn't help that business model much.

     I enjoyed my Pizza Hut buffet experience, and I was happy to discover there was one still operating relatively close to where I live. However, as I mentioned before, with all the madness of 2020, I don't know if the Cocoa Beach Pizza Hut ever reopened the buffet, and recent reviews don't shed any light on an answer to that question either. Next time I'm up in Cocoa Beach I should swing by here to find out, but at least I was able to slip in this one visit before the world spiraled into madness.

     Before we leave, here's one last look at the Pizza Hut building, this photo looking at the back of the restaurant. While it didn't appear to be open at the time of my visit (as it looks like someone was using it as a parking spot), this place did have a drive thru window. Even if this window wasn't used much prior, maybe having this window came in handy the last few months as restaurants began to push drive-thru and carryout options even more.

     After eating all that pizza, a nice long walk along the beach sounds like a good way to finish off this post. I included the map above to show everyone just how close Pizza Hut is to the beach, the red pin marking the location of the restaurant.

     A nice lunch followed by a pleasant day for a walk on the beach, a win-win if you ask me!

     This picture looking out into the Atlantic will finish out our post on the Cocoa Beach Pizza Hut. While the fate of the buffet itself may be a bit uncertain these days, the restaurant overall seems to do good business due to its location, which is nice to see. So even if 2020 did happen to out-buffet the hut, the hut still stands here in Cocoa Beach to serve out pizza regardless, and hopefully that will continue to for many years more.

     So that's all I have for today's post (and I apologize for any pizza craving you may be having right now). Until next time,

AFB

Winn-Dixie #2325 - Cocoa Beach, FL (Pre-Hurricane Matthew)

Winn-Dixie #2325

100 Canaveral Plaza Blvd., Cocoa Beach, FL - Canaveral Plaza

     This Winn-Dixie opened on June 23, 1985 in a space previously home to a Publix wing store, replacing an older Winn-Dixie store further south on Route A1A. This store received a Marketplace remodel sometime in the 90’s, but not much else between then and 2016. This store’s pharmacy also closed in 2014. In October 2016, Hurricane Matthew caused part of this store’s roof to collapse. This store was closed for 10 months after that in order to fix the roof and reconstruct this store’s interior, with a grand reopening occurring on July 26, 2017.

     Welcome to world famous Cocoa Beach, one of Florida's most famous beach destinations! In this post we'll be visiting the town's really old looking Winn-Dixie store (prior to its reconstruction in 2017). It was pouring and late in the day on a weekday when I was here, so the place was fairly quiet compared to the weekends when this area really picks up. Cocoa Beach is a nightmare to drive through on a weekend, especially on holiday weekends. As PlazaACME said, "For some reason, stores always seem more welcoming on rainy evenings."

     A better, less rain blurred picture of the really old W-D style exterior. The pastel pink color of the Winn-Dixie and the pastel green and pink used in the rest of the plaza really give this place the feel of a classic old Florida shopping center, so I'm kind of glad this place hadn't changed much over the years. The old Winn-Dixie logo on the building itself also reinforces this!

     Here's another view of the exterior. My pictures of the exterior of this store came out rather well for being taken on a rainy day. Usually my phone will start taking all kinds of weird, blurred pictures when it rains or gets even the tiniest bit dark out.

     The main entrance, located to the right side of the awning. While the exterior looks really old, possibly hinting at something interesting inside, the interior isn't anything all too out of the ordinary. This store had the Marketplace interior prior to its reconstruction, however it still retained the pre-Marketplace era layout. It's interesting that they never put the Marketplace signage on the exterior after they redid the interior. Anyway though, let's head inside...

     Now inside the store, this is looking up the left side wall from the Wine department into Produce and Juice.

     Looking down Aisle 1 into the "World of Wine" department. The floral department was on the left side of this aisle, but that got clipped out of the photo.

     Rounding the corner from the wine department we find the Lunch Meats. At least they got the location of the lunch meats right here, unlike at the Palm Bay Winn-Dixie at Port Malabar and Babcock!

     One of the grocery aisles, Aisle 10 in particular with soda on the left, and chips on the right.

     Here we can see the front left corner of the store. There’s quite a bit going on here. This area is home to the former pharmacy, the deli, the tiny bakery, beer, and the beginning of frozen foods. Another thing I forgot to mention is this store has had its original Marketplace aisle markers switched out for the ones from the Purple/Maroon interior of the early 2000s. You can see what the original ones would have looked like here.

     Some Chek soda cans in their native habitat. The flavors pictured above were part of a content Winn-Dixie ran back in 2015 where Check fans could submit a new flavor to be added to Chek's core lineup. The three finalists (which were actually put into production to sample and vote on) were Funnel Cake Soda, Key Lime Pie soda, and Tropical Island soda. You can read my reviews on these soda flavors here. In case you were wondering, the winner of this contest was the Tropical Island soda, which you can still buy at Winn-Dixie today.

     The Deil and Bakery departments, which share this space in the front left corner. Winn-Dixie’s older stores typically had a rather small bakery, with the deli taking over most of this space.

     The frozen foods department on the left side of the store, complete with some very low hanging lights and older style coffin case freezers. As andsome96 commented, "The ceiling in these old Winn-Dixie stores seem almost Kmart-like." They are pretty similar, especially when you throw in those large round air diffusers 70's Kmart stores were famous for (one of which is visible in the next photo).

     The customer service counter and a few of the registers can be seen here. The register lights also date to the Purple/Maroon era as well.

     Thank you for shopping WD. What’s interesting about that is this sign usually reads “Thank you for shopping at America’s Supermarket”, referencing Winn-Dixie’s tagline from that era. You can see an example of the more typical sign here. I’m not sure if this sign was always like this or of this was an attempt at updating the sign, since the America’s Store tagline was phased out in the late 90’s. It just seems like an odd choice to put only WD up there if this was original.

     While that concludes our tour of Cocoa Beach Winn-Dixie pre-reconstruction - just wait! There's still more to cover!

Eckerd #37/Bealls Outlet #194

140 Canaveral Plaza Boulevard, Cocoa Beach, FL – Canaveral Plaza 

     Eckerd originally opened with this shopping center in 1964. Eckerd remained in this space until 1996, when they relocated to a new freestanding location in the parking lot (which faces the busy corner of Routes A1A and 520). This space became Bealls Outlet not long after Eckerd moved into the new building, which is now a CVS. This Bealls Outlet location is actually broken into two storefronts. This location is home to the menswear, children’s clothing, shoe, and home décor departments. The other storefront further down the plaza, which I don’t have a picture of, houses the women’s clothing department. 

Walgreens #2284

4150 N. Atlantic Ave, Cocoa Beach, FL

     This Walgreens opened in 1989 as a rather early freestanding Walgreens. Freestanding Walgreens stores, and freestanding locations for other drug stores chains for that matter, didn’t begin to become popular until the mid 90’s. In the far right of this photo you can see the back wall of the former Eckerd/current CVS building. The CVS and this Walgreens were built practically on top of each other.

Winn-Dixie #2322

655 N. Atlantic Ave., Cocoa Beach, FL – A1A Plaza

     Pictured here is the original Cocoa Beach Winn-Dixie, which opened in 1966. This is the location that was replaced by the Winn-Dixie we just toured in 1985. This former Winn-Dixie is currently divided into a few small storefronts, most of which are empty. The general Winn-Dixie look still exists on the exterior all these years later though.

Ron Jon Surf Shop

4151 N. Atlantic Ave., Cocoa Beach, FL

     Before we depart Cocoa Beach, I need to share a photo of what is probably the most famous store in the entire town. If you've driven along I-95 anywhere in Florida, I'm sure you've seen the billboards for the "World Famous" Ron Jon Surf Shop. Ron Jon originated out of Cocoa Beach, and they now have 13 locations along the East Coast of the US between Florida and New Jersey. It's a popular thing for tourists to get their pictures taken in front of this building, and with the various statues they have out front. As famous as this store is, I've only been in here once, and that was when I was a little kid! When you live so close to these tourist attractions, I guess they lose a lot of their luster since you see it all the time.

     Since we're in Cocoa Beach (and we just visited Ron Jons for our beach supplies), why not stop by the beach itself? This picture was taken looking north up the beach. As mentioned during the Winn-Dixie photos we just saw, the day I took most of these pictures was really rainy and overcast, but there were still a few people out here. The rain certainly won't stop anyone from having a beach day! This above picture was taken at Lori Wilson Park.

     But wait - there's even more to this post!

     As I mentioned before, this Winn-Dixie had to have its interior completely rebuilt after its roof caved in during Hurricane Matthew in 2016. To conclude this post, here is a very brief tour of the reconstructed store to see just how the new store is strikingly different from what was here before...

     Above you can see the exterior of the completely revamped Cocoa Beach Winn-Dixie. Other than some painted over brickwork on the exterior, there’s hardly anything left here from the original store. Winn-Dixie really went all out with this remodel, as you will soon see.

     In the front left corner of the store are the deli, bakery, and prepared food departments (called “The Kitchen” here). The wood grain background for the department signs is only used in deluxe Winn-Dixie remodels, so therefore it’s pretty rare! This décor isn’t anything too fancy, but it has a super-modern feel to it. It also looks much better in a store essentially built from scratch with it. A lot of you guys on flickr agreed that this decor looks super nice and fancy, however Jeff did comment that many stores have adopted similar looks to this recently. From Target's new Super Target decor to Price Chopper's Market 32 decor and even to some of Safeway's most recent remodels, there are quite a few decor packages amongst different chains with similarities to SEG's current interior.

     Produce extends out in front of the bakery and deli, taking up much of the left side of the building.

     Since this store is located directly across the street from the beach, a special “Sand & Surf” department was included in this store. Here you can find a nice selection of beach towels, chairs, toys, sunglasses, and most other beach accessories. They had a decent selection here too, and much less of a crowd than Ron Jons across the street!

     Aisles 10 and 11 were home to health and beauty. Like the old store in the two years prior to the roof collapse, this new store also does not have a pharmacy.

     Frozen food and dairy take up the last aisle in this store, aisle 14. To appeal to children, this store included two buttons you could push that make animal sounds, such as the one that says “What sound does a cow make?” in the photo above.

     A look across the front end, with the deli and bakery off in the distance. Like I said before, you guys were quite impressed with the transformation at this store. In regard to that, YonWooRetail2 commented, "Wow! Amazing transformation! That Bakery and Deli looks great! If Winn-Dixie had the money to do this to all of their stores, they'd compete better with Publix." You'd never think that just a year prior to when I took the post-reconstruction photos, this same building housed a store that looked like something out of 1994! I wish every Winn-Dixie was as nice as this one. I think the remodel saved this store from impending closure, and it's amazing at how busy this store became after the remodel compared to before. YonWooRetail 2 went on to say, "The Winn-Dixie I very briefly visited in The Villages had this same decor, but I didn't like it in there for some reason. This store can pull it off though, and I think the reason it can is because of the high (and newly white-painted) industrial ceilings. Ripping out the old ceiling tiles and painted the ceiling white really modernized this store! I think the reason I didn't like this decor in The Villages' store is because they left in the old ceiling tiles and it felt too low-almost claustrophobic feeling. Plus it made the red-painted walls stand out too much." In addition to the extended commentary from YonWoo, here's what some others had to say about this decor: "Bland, but clean. I can dig it!" (Devin Blackwood), "As for the decor, I like it. It may be modern and all, by the colors used make it pop enough for me." (Random Retail), "Bland, but it is clean, fresh, and bright...which I don't think are words that apply to too many of their locations." (mbz32190) and "I got to marvel once again at the fact that those post-remodel pictures do indeed somehow, mind-blowingly, come from the same building!" (Retail Retell)

     For an extended took at the Cocoa Beach Winn-Dixie post-remodel, I did an entire blog post on this store on AFB that you can read here.

So until the next post,

AFB