Here’s what the Pizza Hut of the future looks like

Your next visit to a Pizza Hut might remind you of Chipotle.

Your next visit to a Pizza Hut might remind you of Chipotle. The chain on Tuesday unveiled a new design concept that features a pizza-making station at the center of the restaurant, allowing customers to see employees make their orders. It’s part of broader changes Pizza Hut is showing off at a remodeled location as the chain contends with sluggish sales and increasing competition. Also at the Plano, Texas, restaurant is a modernized interior that has touchscreen kiosks for customers to place orders and heated cabinets for pick-up. The exterior has a drive-thru lane with serving a new “Hut ‘N Go” menu, which features new digital menu boards and serves pre-made foods in an attempt to reduce wait times. Pizza Hut and its rivals are struggling as inflation-weary customers hunt for value. The industry faces intense competition from third-party delivery apps that have replaced pizza delivery – an American mainstay – with other options, including McDonald’s, for people’s to-go orders, according to Jonathan Maze, editor-in-chief at Restaurant Business Magazine. Maze told CNN that Pizza Hut has a “weird history” because it started off as a full-service restaurant until Domino’s rose to prominence and “started the commoditization of the pizza business,” which resulted in consumers having little loyalty among brands. “As delivery and take-out took hold, pizza became more of a food that you ate at home rather than in a restaurant,” he said. “The model that Pizza Hut had used successfully for a few decades was going out of style.”