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

Live Life With Extra Sprinkles, 'Cause I Wanna Go To Friendly's!

     Hello everyone, and welcome to a new feature here on My Florida Retail! Today I introduce to you "Dining With AFB & Friends". While we've seen some restaurants here on My Florida Retail before, most of the ones covered so far have been abandoned, repurposed, or casually looked at from the outside. While we'll still see plenty of restaurants from those perspectives in the future here on MFR, there are lots of obscure, rare, faltering, or otherwise interesting restaurants that not only would I like to photograph for posterity, but that I'd also like to try the food from too! So that's how Dining with AFB & Friends was born, as myself and the other contributors of the blog (if they ever wish to do something like this) from time to time take you all into the restaurants with us. For our first Dining with AFB & Friends post, we'll stop by a restaurant chain that's made the news this week due to another round of closings being announced...

Friendly's Restaurant #7695

1011 E. Eau Gallie Boulevard, Indian Harbour Beach, FL

     This Friendly's Restaurant opened in 1988, built in the classic Colonial building style of the chain's restaurants in the Northeast at the time (which fit in nicely in New England, but stand out quite a bit here in Florida). Today this Friendly's in Indian Harbour Beach is the last of its kind in Brevard County, as well as one of only three Friendly's Restaurants left in all of Florida (the other two being on International Drive in Orlando and the other in Port St. Lucie).

     "We are open," reads the road sign on this Friendly's Restaurant on the morning of April 11, 2019. Considering how rare an operating Friendly's Restaurant is in Florida these days, in addition to last week's announcement that 23 Friendly's locations in New York and New England would be closing, the employees at this location in Indian Harbour Beach probably want to reassure locals and tourists alike that they aren't seeing things when this Friendly's sign appears on the horizon along Route A1A.

     Friendly's made their way down to Florida sometime in the 1980's I believe, during a time when the company had over 500 locations in the Northeast, Midwest, and Southeastern US and was growing rapidly. Friendly's skipped their way down to Florida like many other companies hoping to find success in the sun, that their legacy in the Northeast would resonate with all the transplanted Northerners now calling Florida home. Friendly's continued to build restaurants in Florida into the 2000's, when the chain began entering its period of decline. It seemed like most major cities in Florida had a Friendly's at one time, so there were a decent number of them down here at one point. While I don't have an exact count of how many Friendly's in total operated in Florida, I can say that Brevard County had either 4 or 5 Friendly's of its own at one time (including the location we'll be seeing today in Indian Harbour Beach, as well as former locations in Melbourne, Melbourne Square Mall, Merritt Island, and possibly one at Searstown Mall in Titusville, however I couldn't confirm if that Titusville one ever opened or not). Taking that into consideration, I'd have to guess there were at least 30-40 Friendly's in Florida at the company's peak. 

     Anyway, while some of these Friendly's locations closed in the early 2000's or even before that, the company expedited closures as the 2010's began, many of these closings triggered by Friendly's bankruptcy in October 2011. Other closure waves trickled out after that, bringing the company to where it is today. While Florida was always an isolated market for Friendly's (the next closest locations appearing in Myrtle Beach, SC), the three random Friendly's left down here after years of shrinking are even more of an anomaly, all clustered in East Central Florida and fairly out of the way from the next closest cluster of Friendly's Restaurants. (Which is a situation that sounds quite similar to one that a certain supermarket chain tried to pull off a few years ago, doesn't it?)

     With news of those recent Friendly's closures floating around, in addition to just recently realizing that out of Friendly's 174 remaining locations, only three of them are in Florida, I made a note in my mind to try to patronize my local Friendly's at some point soon. I figured today would be a good of a day as any to visit Friendly's, especially after browsing their menu online and noticing some $5 weekday breakfast specials that sounded like a good deal. Hungry and ready to go, I took a nice morning ride up A1A for some Friendly's for the first time in many years...

      In addition to the photos I took in April 2019, I also have a few photos I took of this Friendly's location a few years ago. I posted these old photos to flickr, which I believe I left on there when I started to delete content to conform to the new uploading restrictions. Three years ago, instead of a plea that this restaurant was still open, the message on the signboard featured a little play on a famous political slogan going around as the election of 2016 neared.

     Moving away from the road sign, here's our first look at the building itself. This is the classic Friendly's building style, modeled after the Colonial architecture common in the New England area. The entrance into the restaurant is located under the red awning.

     Here's another view of the front of the restaurant. This Friendly's doesn't have any signage whatsoever on the front of the building, opting instead to place signs on each of the sides.

     Turning our attention to the left side of the building, here's one of those signs I mentioned. This particular sign faces Route A1A, as does the main road sign. When I took this photo a few years ago, everything looked good over here...

     ...however, a few hurricanes later, Friendly's has been reduced to nothing more than "riendly" now. The last hurricane to have any impact on this area was Hurricane Irma in 2017, so that's how long this sign has been broken like this. There's also the off chance a passing storm could have done this damage, but it's pretty rare for a passing strong thunderstorm to whip signs around so much to where they begin to fall apart like this.

     Anyway, on this side of the building we also see the now closed off drive-thru window, visible where that brick wall jumps out from the rest of the building. At one time you could order ice cream at that window, but it looks like it's been a long time since that was possible here. I think some Friendly's still offer drive-thru windows according to the website though.

     Moving around to the right side of the building, we see the other sign, which is still fully intact. Those arched windows look into the main dining room, which we'll see in just a moment.

     Here's a look at the front right corner of the building, the main entrance located just behind those bushes and palm trees. This building was looking a bit rough around the edges, not only because of the broken sign on the other side, but also due to the missing brick on this corner of the building. I don't know how that brick went missing, but the wooden framing of the building became exposed when the brick came down. While the outside of the building was looking a bit rough, I discovered looking through county records that Friendly's actually renewed their lease at this location. The original lease on this building expired in 2017 according to records. I couldn't find a copy of the new lease to see how long the term is, but for Friendly's to renew, I guess this place does decent business. Being right across the street from the beach in an area with a decent amount of tourists probably helps this location. Not only that, but ice cream is always nice after a day at the beach 😀

     Stepping inside the restaurant, this is the view we see. Like most Friendly's, to the left when you enter is a small counter where you can order ice cream, and to the right is a cooler with prepackaged cartons of ice cream and ice cream treats for purchase. I didn't get a picture of the counter to the left (as a bunch of waitresses and cooks were hanging out behind it), but it was identical to this one.

     I didn't actually eat my food in the restaurant itself, opting instead to order my food online and pick it up to go. However, as I waited for the cooks to finish preparing my order, I was able to get this picture looking into the dining room. It doesn't look like much has been updated in the dining room since this place opened in 1988, but the building looks much better maintained on the inside than it does from the outside. I personally don't care if the furnishings are old, just as long as they're clean! Friendly's also had all of their Easter decorations out too, some of which you can see up on that shelf along the restaurant's back wall.

     Now that we've seen the restaurant itself, it's time to eat! For my late breakfast today, I ordered the vegetable omelet with home fries and wheat toast. Since Friendly's takes 50% off select breakfast entrees during the week, I got all of this for only $5 plus tax - a great deal I must say. The omelet was very good too. Friendly's didn't skimp on the vegetables in the omelet either, with plenty of mushrooms, peppers, onions, and tomatoes cooked into the egg, as well as garnished with more vegetables on top. It was a very filling breakfast, and well worth $5. One of these days I'll have to try the lunch menu, as there were some good lunch specials I saw online too. I hope the Indian Harbour Beach Friendly's sticks around for a while, as I was quite happy with my breakfast!

     As I said before, the Indian Harbour Beach Friendly's is located directly across the street from the beach. It was a nice day so I hopped across the street to Canova Beach to see what was going on over here, as well as grab a few photos to include with this post.

     With temperatures hitting 90 degrees for the first time in 2019 this week, the beach had a bit of a crowd for a Thursday morning. Come this weekend, there will be people everywhere here!

     So I hope you guys liked this new feature. This isn't going to be a common one (at least from me - I don't know if any of the others will pick up this feature up more often), but I might do a Dining with AFB & Friends every once and a while to keep things interesting.

     Anyway, that's all I have for now. I'm slowly progressing on getting the next portion of the Melbourne Sears closing series ready, so hopefully that will be coming up before too long!

Until the next post,

AFB