Pizza Hut Closing 250 Stores, Is Montana on the List?

Pizza Hut has revealed it is closing some 250 locations throughout the U.S. It’s part of a larger strategy shift, and it sounds as though they are concentrating on shedding stores that aren’t holding their weight.

Aka, if a location is out on Main staying open late into the night slanging pan pizza, trying to break even or just scrimp and save enough to ring in on Monday morning with the lights still flipping on, it’s maybe earning that dreaded nudge from corporate.

No official list of closures has been released, so we’re all playing the fun American game “Am I Next?”

What This Would Mean For Montana

Montana, well, we're not exactly Pizza Hut central. We are not a place with high population density or an excess of late-night breadstick demand.

But what we do have, dotting the state are Pizza Huts. If this wave of closings is going after underperforming stores, there might exist some small-town ones that are indeed sweating right now. Not the meat sweats either, like the one's you get when you crush a Meat Lover’s pizza.

Which Towns Should Be Nervous?

If you wanna go by a gut feeling, which we do, here are the Montana Pizza Huts most likely to look out the window like a tragic dog whose owner is never coming home:

• The one that still has a dining room but hasn’t hosted a birthday party since 2009.
• The one where the salad bar is reportedly still there, but as a rumor.
• In the town, where everyone now orders from local pizza places, or the bar, and just grills steaks like adults.
• Or the one that somehow lives in a parking lot with three other food chains and still comes out on the losing end.

The Real Montana Tragedy

If Montana begins losing Pizza Huts it ain’t a just a pizza thing. It’s a mark of the end of an era. Because what says “childhood memory” more than red plastic cups, greasy pan crust, and a dining room that smelled like melted cheese and arcade carpet.

And that going away, we might need a moment of silence. Or at the very least, a breadstick memorial.