Pizza Hut ready to reopen

ASHEBORO – After a two-month absence, Pizza Hut at 1315 Dixie Drive in Asheboro is getting ready to reopen. City officials said the owners plan to open on Nov. 15 to provide drive-thru and take out service. In-house dining is expected to return in mid-December, barring complications.

Efforts to reach the restaurant owner, Hut American, a subset of Flynn Restaurant Group in California, were not successful.

According to city records, Pizza Hut suffered a fire on Sept. 6 which forced it to close. Six agencies including the Asheboro Fire Department responded to a report of a fire around 11:30 p.m. on Sept. 6.

At the time, a spokesperson for the fire department said the fire appeared to have started in a checkout counter area. 

A report supplied by the fire department indicates the damage was largely smoke-related. Total damages were estimated at $30,000. No one was hurt in the incident. The cause is listed as unintentional but the report doesn’t indicated what that cause was.

Eddie Garner, city building inspector, said in an interview that the smoke damage to the interior is causing the restaurant to stage its reopening in phases. He said company officials told him they were having some problems with sourcing the materials needed to complete the rehab of the interior. 

Information in the Randolph County tax records shows the restaurant was originally built in 1983 by R&W Pizza Huts of NC. According to restaurant industry reports and a press release on the Hut American website, the local Pizza Hut was one of many owned by NPC International. NPC International entered into Chapter 11 bankruptcy in July 2020, citing a number of problems including the impact of Covid 19 on the restaurant industry. 

Flynn Restaurant Group announced in June 2022 that the company had completed its efforts to acquire 937 Pizza Huts and some other properties from NPC International. This makes Flynn Restaurant Group the NO. 3 restaurant operator in the U.S behind Starbucks and Chipolte, according to the industry magazine Franchise Times.