Pizza Hut/Curves Gym – Bankstown, NSW
There’s a sick sense of humour lurking behind the decision to turn an old Pizza Hut into a gym. It used to be that you’d walk out of the Bankstown Hoyts 8 cinema and straight over to Pizza Hut for all you could eat, but now you’re faced with a reminder that if you have that plan, you more than likely also have a few curves.
Sadly, for those hoping to undo the damage of years of pizza abuse at Curves, you’re out of luck. The building appears to be empty now, further adding to the wasteland feel of this part of Bankstown, and with his ad-hoc adjustment of the number of years he’s been in Bankstown, Frank isn’t helping.
UPDATE: The Curves gym is still in operation, functioning as a kind of Masonic secret gym society for women only. It’s rumoured that an angry husband of one of the members caused a fuss inside the gym once upon a time, and ever since, men have not been admitted…maybe the guy was just peeved that Pizza Hut was gone. Whatever the story, this sign awaits anyone with the balls the enter (so to speak):
Image courtesy Irmgard Heap.
Imagine a Pizza Hut toilet, and then imagine how many times that manager must have been notified. Thanks for the tip, Irmgard!
The Hartee’s Saga, Part I – Earlwood, NSW
Australia’s experiences with American-style fast food started during the Second World War. Visiting American GIs helped the relatively young nation get a taste for hamburgers with cheese and fried chicken, while the influx of immigrants to the country introduced exotic food such as the souvlaki, pizza and kebabs. The major fast food franchises of today had all originated in the USA in the 1940s and 50s, and while Australia had been content thus far to survive on meat pies, milk bars and Chinese restaurants for take away treats, the 1960s ushered in a new wave. The fast food empires saw Australia as prime territory. Kentucky Fried Chicken was first to move in, establishing its first Australian store at Guildford in Sydney’s west in 1968. Pizza Hut opened its first store in Belfield in April, 1970. In that same year, amid the American invasion, the first major Australian-owned fast food franchise opened its store in Earlwood, NSW.
The first Hartees, now The Chicken Coop, Earlwood.
Seizing on the absence of hamburger franchises thus far in Australia (McDonalds would open their first location in 1971), Kellogg Food Products Pty. Ltd. had made an agreement with the American Hardee’s chain of hamburger restaurants to create ‘Hartee’s’, an American-style burgers-‘n-fries restaurant franchise. The first Hartee’s opened here, on the corner of Homer Street and Joy Ave in Earlwood, with the take-away shop below and the head office above. Unlike many other Australian attempts to emulate the American fast food experience, Hartee’s was a success – TV and radio carried the jingle “Hurry on down to Hartee’s, where the burgers are barbecued!”. Kelloggs planned for over 100 Hartee’s locations in Australia and New Zealand, but it didn’t quite work out that way…
Pizza Hut/Olsens Funerals – Revesby, NSW
Continuing in the series of Pizza Hut restaurants around Sydney, today we find Revesby’s former Pizza Hut restaurant converted into an Olsens funeral home. Pizza Hut would have closed around 1999, so this has been there for awhile. The roof is starting to lose its green, with the former red paint clearly visible from the street. So too the door handle:
As we’ll soon discover as we continue exploring the repurposing of old Pizza Huts, this one is up there with the strangest. I wonder if they kept the oven?
Pizza Hut/Belfield Charcoal BBQ House/Seoul Hoikwan Restaurant – Belfield, NSW
This is the first of what will doubtless be many entries about Pizza Huts. In 1999, Pizza Hut HQ decided that eat-in restaurants were no longer viable, and spent the next ten years selling them off. Only a handful, if that, still exist. What’s funny is how the new owners mostly haven’t bothered to disguise that their new acquisition was once a Pizza Hut, but we’ll get to those.
This one is fair enough; it’s just another restaurant. Why change it? However, this one is notable because it was Australia’s first Pizza Hut. It was built in 1970, and apart from its iconic red roof now being green, it doesn’t look that different.
You missed a spot, guys.
Past/Lives of the Near Future 