Pizza Hut Australia is unveiling its latest store today, and you’ll be surprised at the fresh look that’s taking the brand into the future.

The restaurant’s interior has retro touches and reflects Pizza Hut’s American heritage but with a fresh Australian contemporary feel. Features include an open kitchen, indoor, outdoor and bar dining spaces and a digital juke box.

As well as a new look interior design for the chain, the Waterloo location will function as a Centre of Restaurant Excellence, an innovation lab to test and prove concepts to then roll out in select stores around Australia.

Pizza Hut Australia innovation director Matthew Sawyer said 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.

The opening of the Waterloo store also reveals a familiar face re-imagined: ‘Pizza Pete’, the original Pizza Hut icon, has been re-introduced into the signage and internal designs.

“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 crowd-pleasers from the old Pizza Hut days, albeit with a modern twist. These include a Dessert Hut with free-flowing real 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.