Brands have discovered a new way to spark sales: Sell the same thing they offered 30 years ago.
Driving the news: One of Pizza Hut’s largest franchisees, Daland Corporation, is remodelling dozens of its locations to look like the chain’s old restaurants from the ‘90s, including its famous stained-glass lamps, retro red booths, and pan pizza buffets.
Pizza Hut has struggled with slumping sales (we guess you really can out-pizza the Hut), but Daland says the restaurants it has already retro-fied are some of the best-performing locations in the U.S.
Videos online romanticizing the old restaurants have racked up millions of views, and people are driving for hours to have a meal at one of these locations.
Why it’s happening: Whether it's pizza, a flip phone, or a pair of low-waisted jeans, brands are leaning into nostalgia to open wallets. Taco Bell has rolled out its own Y2K menu, Kodak has been thrown a financial lifeline from the resurgence in film cameras, while popular 90s fashion brands like Ed Hardy, Abercrombie & Fitch, and Juicy Couture are seeing a social media-fuelled renaissance.
On the tech side, Motorola has been a big winner. After becoming virtually obsolete post-90s, it’s now one of the fastest-growing mobile phone companies in the world, thanks to the nostalgic resurgence of flip phones.
Why it matters: The high demand for all things ‘90s and Y2K says more about how people are feeling right now than it does about the actual desire for a retro Pizza Hut. Research has shown that nostalgic purchases often serve as an emotional safety blanket when people are feeling bad about their economic situation or the state of the world. In other words, people chase relics of their past when they don’t feel super optimistic about the present.—LA
