A Google Maps image shows the store front of the longest-running Pizza Hut restaurant in the U.S., which is set to close on Sunday.
The location, which has been in operation for nearly 55 years in Manhattan, KS, will close its doors for the last time on Sunday, The Topeka Capital-Journal reports.
Pizza Hut began serving piping hot pies to customers in 1958 in Wichita, KS, just down the road a few hours from Manhattan – home of Kansas State University.
The owner of the restaurant, who operates several other Pizza Hut locations in the area, said closing was the “toughest decision I’ve had to make in my life,” but that he finally acknowledged that the financial side of the business outweighed its historical significance.
The man tells the Capital-Journal that the restaurant, built in Manhattan’s Aggieville entertainment district in 1960, simply wasn’t designed to handle the changing pizza habits of customers, who now favor delivery.
“If you had asked me in 1960, how long the Aggieville store would have lasted, I doubt I would’ve said almost 55 years,” the owner said. “No one here even knew what a pizza was! Imagine that! But I don’t think I would have guessed how big Pizza Hut – and Manhattan and Fort Riley and Kansas State – would get either.”
While the closure of the longest-running Pizza Hut is historically significant for the chain, it represents an incredibly small fraction of the company’s more than 11,000 restaurants.
Nation’s longest-running Pizza Hut in Manhattan to close Sunday [The Topeka Capital-Journal]
by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist