Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

Well, I don't know why this Pizza Hut closed, but just having visited once, to take these pictures, I can hazard a guess as to a contributing factor: The exit to St. Andrews Road is terrible. I drove around the building on the old drive-through route, and found that when I came out in front of the building again, there was not enough room to get my car pointed to the right and exit onto SAR headed for Tram Street. Granted some cars have a better turning radius, but still it's not well designed, and due to space constraints probably cannot be well designed.

I think it's interesting that the building is of the current generation of Pizza Hut designs. I'm more used to seeing the old style ones (like this and this) closed.

(Hat tip to commenter Andrew)

UPDATE 16 February 2016 -- As mentioned in the comments, the Domino's in this location is now open, and has been for a while:

It's been a few years since I noticed this, but somehow I never got around to mentioning it: The Pizza Hut attached to the Columbia Travel Center plaza closed up shop a couple of years ago. As I recall, it was not a full Pizza Hut, but one of the "express" type operations.

I suspect it was a highly unpleasant job, but someone apparently climed the sign tower to elide the "Hut" portion of the Pizza Hut placard!

UPDATE 26 June 2023: Updating tags and adding map icon. Also, just noticed I apparently have this Pizza Hut listed twice, once on the Wilson Boulevard address, and once on the Plumbers Road address. Oh well.

The point when North Main Street turns into Wilson Boulevard and crosses over I-20 never seems to prosper for some reason. Or at least so it seems with it having lost Denny's, Gaz-Bah and Pizza Hut.

I suspect the Pizza Hut was one of those brand-destroying kiosk type locations and probably no big loss, but I used to notice the sign when I lived in Aiken, and would travel I-20 west many weekends. I thought I was familar with most Columbia Pizza Huts and could never quite place where it was, as I was expecting a freestanding building.

I have to say that the enclosing "Travel Plaza" has seen better days and is confusing to get in and out of to boot. I had no idea until I took these pictures that the little I-20 industrial frontage strip is called "Plumbers Road". I wonder if it had a plumbing dispatch office on it and got named that during the great 9-1-1 sevice street naming binge of a few years back or it has always been that. There is also a Day's Inn a bit further down the street, and I expect they must work really hard to find "reasons to pick our location" on their marketing...

UPDATE 26 June 2023: Updating tags, adding map icon. Also noticed this Pizza Hut is listed twice with the other listing under the Wilson Boulevard address. Oh well.

The whole area on Garners Ferry near where this Pizza Hut sat has been reworked so much over the years that it's hard to say exactly where the restaurant actually was, but I think it's not far off the mark to say it was about where Ruby Tuesday now is.

I don't know what the ownership structure of Columbia Pizza Huts in the 70s & 80s was, but as far as I could tell, they were almost all about the same, with no real standouts or bad stores. (I believe PH was in general better back then -- I don't care too much for it today). I say almost because this store was something of an outlier.

I remember that my sister and I stopped there once in the late 70s, and after our pizza came we ate for a few minutes before, independantly, coming to the conclusion that while the crust was fine, the cheese properly melted, and the toppings we had ordered had been duly applied -- there was no sauce anywhere on the pizza. I believe we raised it as an issue to the manager, but decided to take a discount on the check rather than wait for a new pizza to be prepared.

I didn't think much of the incident though obviously it did not move that PH to the top my "where to eat pizza" list. Still about five years later, I found myself in the area when it was time to eat and decided to stop by again. As I'm sure you already suspect, my pie was once again served sauceless. Now, the old saying is

Once is happenstance
Twice is coincidence and
Three times is enemy action.

and I didn't try a third time, so I can't rule out coincidence, but I can't help suspect that there was a management policy to cut costs by shorting the sauce. After all it's the least noticable bit of the pizza, being normally mostly hidden under the cheese anyway.

I can't remember exactly what happened to the place. Either it burned down (I know the one of Forest Drive did, so I may be conflating with that) or was torn down during one of the plaza remodels. At any rate, it was never rebuilt, and I can't say I'm too heartbroken about it.

UPDATE 5 March 2011: Changed the post title to use "Devine Street" rather than "Garners Ferry Road". I thought the name changed at Fort Jackson Boulevard, but actually Devine Street goes all the way to Wildcat Road.

UPDATE 26 June 2023: Updating tags and adding map icon.

The Forest Acres area used to have several Pizza Huts. There was one on Forest Drive more or less across the street from where Golden Corral is now. There was one on Garners Ferry about where Ruby Tuesday is now, and then there was this one on Beltline in between D's Wings and the Japanese steakhouse.

I was noticing that Casa Linda looks a bit like an old-style Pizza Hut (though with some additions) and that this building is one of the newer style Pizza Huts, so it's possible that they moved here from the Casa Linda building. However, I have no recollection of any such thing, so that's just speculation.

At any rate, this Pizza Hut was part of my ongoing disenchantment with the chain, becase the service was consistently... not good. In fact this store had an innovation I had not seen before, and have not seen since: A Neon Help Wanted sign.

Honestly, do you want your customers to notice that your help turns over so often that you have a built-in, lighted, Help Wanted sign? Much better to just continue to tape a paper one in the window every week. That will go below most people's radar.

After this place went under as a Pizza Hut it became a Rising High. This was sort of interesting because it was one of the most protracted re-purposings I can recall. My memory is that the Coming Soon Rising High! sign went up at least a full year before they got around to opening, with the actual work seeming to happen on a very off-and-on basis. I suspect that opening this store while also trying to cope with the road-work on Harden Street was what drove Rising High under. At any rate, this store didn't last long.

I think there may have been another operation between Rising High and the current tenant, Shane's, but if so I can't now recall what it was.

UPATE 26 June 2023: Updating tags and adding map icon.

I've mentioned in one of my other posts, my gradual disenchantment with Pizza Hut which over the years has, due to bad corporate choices, turned from a place I looked forward to going to into a place which provides a mediocre experience at best.

I believe this former Pizza Hut on Knox Abbot Drive in Cayce is, to date, the last Pizza Hut I have eaten at in Columbia. There was nothing particularly bad about it that put me off Columbia Pizza Huts, in fact the staff was quite friendly and attentive -- it's just that in my own stomping grounds, I generally have better options for pizza. This was, however, about 10pm on Christmas Eve 2002, a date and time when anything higher up the food chain than The Waffle House that's still open is pretty hard to find. I was en route from Augusta to Pawleys Island. I can't quite picture now how I ended up on Knox Abbot unless I was cutting down I-26 to get to I-77 and the Sumter Highway, still it was a welcome break.

I don't know when this store went under, and it seems a bit odd, since I can't think of another Pizza Hut on that side of town. At any rate, the tax place has now been there several years. Perhaps they can get you a deep-dish refund.

UPDATE 25 January 2017: Added the full street address and some tags

UPDATE 23 February 2022: Adding map icon.

UPDATE 26 June 2023: Update tags.

The Pizza Hut on Broad River Road found itself in a less than ideal location after the implosion of Service Merchandise and the downscaling of Dutch Square. Still they hung on until they had a chance to move to the new Wal-Mart location on Bush River Road, which they have now done.

I can only remember eating there a few times over the years. It's interesting to me how during the time I've been buying my own meals, Pizza Hut has gone from being a "nice" place to eat to a sub-par fast-food experience. They have always had a problem over the years with the customer being able to figure out whether to pay the server or pay at the register, but they used to have a fairly good food and reasonable service.

It seemed to me that the food started going down-hill in the 90s, and the service, including the kitchen staff followed quickly. For me the final straw was when a lot of locations started serving "fountain" ice tea instead of fresh brewed. I recall being at a location in Lauringburg NC, and sending my tea back as I could taste that there was "something wrong with it". The waiter commented "yeah, a lot of people say that since we switched." I was kind of flabbergasted that the store had an obvious problem which people were giving them feedback on, but about which they apparently did not care. The most recent time I stopped at a Pizza Hut was in Walterboro when I could find nothing else reasonable looking off of I-95 that was still open. The tables hadn't been wiped, I sat for 20 minutes without a drink or my order being taken, the ice tea was fountain, and the cook hadn't been taught how to cook the garlic bread orders (apparently there is an opening half-way through the oven where you are supposed to insert a garlic bread tray, but he ran it all the way through).

So, that's a bit of venting about Pizza Hut in general. It's not fair to put it on the Broad River one, but I don't think I'll be visiting the new location.

UPDATE 23 May 2011 -- Here's a picture of this Pizza Hut's new location in the Wal-Mart plaza on Bush River Road:

UPDATE 15 September 2012 -- The old Broad River Road building is now a title loan operation:

UPDATE 26 June 2023: Updating tags and adding map icon.