The Dumb Zone FREE - DZ 5-19-26 | Wemby vs. SGA and Tim Sparks on bringing retro Pizza Huts back

Episode Date: May 19, 2026

People are using pipe bombs to blast fish at Lewisville Lake now and Tim Sparks, President of Daland Corporation, is bringing retro Pizza Huts back and he joins the show to explain how it got started and how the restaurants with the checkered tablecloths and red cups are goingSubscribe to hear the full show! DumbZone.com or Patreon.com/TheDumbZoneRun sheet:Open: Jake at a 1st grade graduationSports: Wemby vs. SGAIowa basketball coach’s wife versus the play-by-play guyDan obsessed with hotel hallway carpetNews: Wade Mode didn’t save this CybertruckTim Sparks: Bring retro Pizza Huts backVM birthdays/Today in History ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Hey now, what you were about to hear is a free preview of one of this week's premium episodes of The Dumb Zone. If you would like to hear this program in full, along with the full archive, ah, shit. If you would like to hear this program in full with the archive of all of our past episodes, you can subscribe at Dumbzone.com. But in the case of this bomb, pipe bomb, that was found at Lake Louisville last night, they say that people have been doing this lately to catch fish oh yeah I was unaware

yeah yeah seen that for sure there's been uh I guess a lot of comments on Facebook about this of like we're finding metal everywhere you got to clear out a stock tank you throw a little uh what do you call that

blasting cap out there well didn't it kill the fish and then you just stuns them And you just net them? Yeah. Because they all float to the top. It's like a flash grenade. Yeah.

That's crazy. My father-in-law was telling me, let me know whenever we got to do what we got to do. That this weekend that, because there's a bunch of shrimp boats out there in the bayou. And you think of shrimp boats as like the big ones with like the huge nets. And he was like, yeah, those, like, basically the shrimp come to the top at, night when it's cooler. So he was like, if you go at night, you can just do it on the top. And they can use smaller boats.

So it was like, as we were getting in for the evening, there were a bunch of these littler boats coming out. He was like, their cleaner shrimp. Oh, yeah. He's like, so they've already like come up to, I don't know. It's like there's a whole. Whole science. And it's almost like turning in cans.

You know what I mean? Like you do it and you go to a place on the way out. They give you a penny each. These shrimp. I don't know about just keep going. A penny, but it's not much. All right, Blake, we have guests. do we

I think so all right all right all right joining us now on our classic pizza hut hotline

it is how do I pronounce your phone oh Tim Sparks excuse me I was going to say the president of Dalin Dallin

I don't know how to pronounce your company name but we'll get into that this is Tim Sparks hello Tim Hey how are you guys doing today doing very well so we all have like these little

these little corners of the world where if something pops in the news about this particular topic, all of your friends will send you the, oh, hey, did you see this happen with Luca Dachach, or something, for example? Well, for me, I think everyone has the Pizza Hut Google Alerts ready to send to me. So when people started covering your story, people started sending it my way. So exactly what is your project right now as it pertains to the revival of your story? pizza hut? Well, I've been around the brand for about 43 years and, you know, Pizza Hut kind of made its name because it was a dining in restaurant where, you know, people got together and families went to eat. And obviously there's a lot of fond memories I know I had because

that's where we used to go on Friday nights with my family before I ever knew I was ever going to have anything to do with Pizza Hut. And it's just really resonated with people. You know, so we're in such a big hurry now and everything gets delivered, you know, with DoorDash. And you can get anything delivered now, not just food, but furniture and clothes and cleaning supplies. And we're always just all in such a hurry. It's just nice to be able to go somewhere. That certainly for me as a kid felt safe. You know, it's just a nice family restaurant.

And so we, rather than try and make it. new era we kind of wanted to go back to our roots and it seems to be resonating with a lot of people i know whenever i walk through the door of one of our classic locations it it truly feels good to me and i'm super proud of what we're doing so you're bringing back the the retro pizza hut uh for those that haven't seen your interview on cbs news or however it's it's spread just explain to our audience like what you're bringing back specifically yeah well we're trying to bring back you know the red roost let's start there. And then once you walk through the door, you know, you are going to see a salad bar. You're going to see the checkered tablecloths, which everybody resonates with. The Tiffany lights,

they've been hard to come by, but we've got them in most of the location, the classic locations. We're trying to find another producer to continue making them for us. We've even got the, you know, we went on Amazon, got, you know, red candles, the things that hold the shakers. And then the red cups is another thing that I didn't know was going to resonate so hard with people. And literally, if somebody comes into one of our classics for the first time, to every single person will comment, oh, my God, they even have the Red Cups. So, yeah, it just takes you back.

Our decor on the walls isn't as traditional. What it is is actually pictures of the past. So we get Book It and things like that up there. But I can taste the RC Cola in a Red Cup. Yeah, you might have to put like a detainte. detector on the way out, though, because people will be taking this. That's the problem. They're tough to keep. Tough to keep in supply. I'm not going to lie. I'm not going to lie. It happens. Yeah. You say our classic store. So how many stores do you own and how many are this new new? Right. So we have 92 locations. We're in 11 different states. Of those 92, 82, 82 are dine-assets. Of the 82, 388 are class. There are some stipulations about how we could buy, how we could build out a classic from pizza.

So it had to be a certain sized building, which are the old classics. They were 30 feet by 80 feet or 30 feet by 60 feet. And then they're supposed to be in towns of less than 7,500. And I think over time they'll probably loosen up those restrictions. But that's the way it would be a classic look is because those were the buildings back in the day. Why limit the town size? I don't know. That's above my pay grade.

I just do what they tell me. They felt 7,500 kept a small town, or maybe they felt it wouldn't work in a larger market. I don't know. But that was the original stipulation. How are these 38 stores doing? Really well, really well. Most of our 92 are in small town America.

As an example, the one that really went viral on that I did the interview. view with CBS, that town is 1,700 people. So super small. Yeah. So, I mean, I don't, I'm not inside the brains of the people that came up with this either, but you'd rather, I think, launch some sort of pilot thing like this small and, and see how it works and see what sort of, you know, month over month you get location over location. But also, there hasn't been like a huge rollout of this, you know, I think a lot of times, so not that you really care that much, Mr. Sparks, but our background, we left a big, large radio company, right? Like, we took our show and we brought it out independent. And to me, there's a lot of putting the cart before the horse in, and really in

business in general. So you guys are doing this without like making it a huge deal out of it. It's, it works. It resonates with the community. And then I guess from there, if needed, you know, you could scale it. Are you familiar at all with what GameStop was trying to do with like in-person stores with people coming back and playing, okay, there's a guy from GameStop that we interviewed that that was a big part of their thing is that people are lonely, right?

They're playing online, but they want to come back and play at the store. And so there's almost like a, there is like a capitalist case for, you know, the emotional part of it, right? That it's not just stripping things down, but actually making money off bringing people back together.

It seems like that's part of the angle of what you guys are trying to do here. Yeah, you know, I was involved in one of the very first three classics in the country we actually did do in DeLonoga, Georgia. And I could tell we were on to something because it just really got a big social media following. And we were getting a lot of people coming in, you know, a couple times a week to make posts and put it out on Twitter and X and places like that. So I could tell it was resonating with folks pretty quick. But what I really noticed, although, you know, they're coming in to filming, a lot of that stuff is seen on people's phones. What we really were seeing are people were actually coming in and having conversations and talking to each other. A lot of times it was about the nostalgia being in that store, but it was just so odd when my wife and I go out to dinner and you see couples or people sitting at tables and they're all literally staring at their phones.

and you just don't see that a whole lot inside of our classic spots. So I can't tell you I'm responsible for the magic, but there is magic involved when you walk in to one of these locations. And again, it feels good. And, you know, when you're talking about there, I was a kid when I played Pac-Man or Gallagher or all those fun games, we went to big arcades. And so that's even pretty nostalgic.

I was in Nashville recently and happened to go into one. And it felt so good to go back into a place where, You're hearing all the noise and you're playing all your favorite games and there's a lot of people around you doing the same. And I think that's kind of a, it's different but the same where people come into our, our classic locations. And it has that good feel to it, hometown, local, you know, I'm meeting with my family and there's my friends over there kind of feel. So most people are just now discovering your project. When did this begin? And, you know, how are those stores doing comparatively to some of your other ones?

Yeah, they're doing really well. Our Delonica location was 2017 or 2018. Might have been 2018. So it's been around a minute. Once Pizza made it available to us, it wasn't like we said, okay, we've got all this capital. Let's go out and change 40 locations. So we've over time, any of the ones that we were basically time for a remodel, and they fit the criteria we've made them to classic.

Every single one we've been able to do to this time, we've turned into a classic. So you also have, I just want to make sure that we have a jukebox and we got Santana and Boston and. Well, three dog night. I'm going to, I'm going to disappoint you, but we're working, we're looking at it. So, because initially we didn't have any of the games. and we just had so many requests. Now we started to bring in, it's not just Pac-Man,

it's one of the newer technology. It has all of them, you know, Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., you know, all of it. And so we are bringing those back. So we're actually actively looking to be able to do something. The key is now jukeboxes are just little boxes on a wall. You know, they're not what you traditionally see

in a pizza back in the day. Yeah, we're actually taking an active look at that. We are probably not going to bring back the pay phone that was always over by the bathrooms, right? There was always a pay phone. And I'm going back, you know, I've been in around 43 years. We even used to have cigarette machines, you know. So I don't know we'll go quite that far. But we are actively looking at how to bring back rather than using our background music,

go ahead and bring in a jukebox. Is that we bring back like sexual harassment in the workplace? In our industry, it's not bringing back. It's, I mean, we, we, you know, when you, when you start out as a dishwasher, when it was an 18-year-old kid, you certainly don't foresee yourself on a podcast, you know, 43 years later. But what you also don't understand is all of the things that go on across the company that,

those types of headache. So unfortunately, we deal with all kinds of HR things. It's part of it. Is the menu, the modern Pizza Hut menu, Is it mirror every other pizza or is there any nostalgia to that? Certainly ingredients have changed in 40 years. Yeah, yeah. I mean, our ingredients and our processes have changed.

They haven't changed quite as much as a lot of people like to say they have. I mean, the green pepper is a green pepper. An onion is an onion, you know. But, yeah, just from technology, certainly the dough has changed a little bit. If you look at across the brand, a hand-toss traditional type of product is what sells mostly. And in fact, we just reformulated our hand-toss. It's actually very, very good now. And I had not ever been a big fan of it in the past.

I thought we could do better. And we just rolled out something that's really good. But for our Dayland locations, pan pizza crust is still the most popular one that we sell. And I think that, you know, a lot of that is because Dailan, we've always really focused on our dough quality. So we've been able to really probably do a little better than the rest of the country and make sure we're always serving really great pandos. So that's still our number one cross. And that's the one that most people resonate with. Are you doing the lunchtime buffets?

We don't, you know what? We only do one, but we have one buffet store. That's it. I mean, we have the salad bar. We have all you need salivars in our dining assets, but we don't actually do buffets anymore. Again, we've considered it, but again, a lot of people bring that up. And we have some great franchisees across the country now that are bringing back those buffets. And we just had a big national meeting last week in San Diego.

And I did a presentation on Dine-in, the traditional way. And somebody else did a presentation, a really good one on buffets and how they're putting them back in and how they're doing very well. So you're certainly going to see a resurgence of that. So one more quick one here. As far as the locations, or excuse me, the physical building at the location, that seems to be where it all starts. It's a big part of it. You know, I don't know if this is just like the boogeyman out there, but you hear that a lot of the classic locations that you see across the industry, they went away because of private equity, right?

Like you've got to be able to take this building and potentially turn it into something else. Is that the re, because it does feel like everything got much more homogenized quickly. Is that part of the reason is just that it's part of a portfolio of properties at that point? That's kind of the headwind you're cutting against right now. Yeah, you know, I think for me, you know, you'd have to go back to our leadership, you know, years ago. And they really wanted to focus on becoming the biggest salivary pizza chain in the world. and we actually accomplished that at one point. I think we just kind of lost our way.

I'm forgetting where our roots were in the dining rooms. And I haven't. I mean, we've always had this many dining assets. One of my partners goes all the way back to the very first pizza up the day it opened. So our name is D-A-L-A-N-D. That's Dale, Albert, Larry, and Norm Development. Well, Dale was one of the first guy. I mean, it was, you know, but Frankie Dan Carney started Pizza Hut.

and four of their frat brothers were working for him, and Dan was one of them. So we go all the way back to when it started literally that first day. And that's how we, you know, that's how pizza became big. That's how it became famous. The business model still works for us, you know, with that, you know, having dining locations, and we're having great success. And I think there's a lot of other franchisees across the country

that are going to try and, you know, jump on this bandwagon because we do see it's a, it's a competitive advantage for sure. but also it feels good. And when you're in your town, these small towns, and even a bigger town, and people resonate with it, it feels like you're actually doing something good. You know, you're accomplishing something that's worthwhile.

I always felt that way about the bucket program. I was involved in that from the beginning of 1984, and it felt good to go out and I go to the stools and read to the kids. And then they come back 20 years later. and talk about how great that was and now their kids are Bookett kids and oh yeah those kind of things in business are fun and and super rewarding book it is back by the way after a brief they tried to take book it from us book it is back uh the retro pizza outs are back so uh this is cool man congrats on the initiative and completely separate whatever i got to do to get them to keep my location has

spicy marinara right now it's got to stay it's got to stay is this a secret it's not going anywhere one final thing I'm just interested in your story you said you started at 18 washing dishes now you're in charge of a project bringing back you know you're in charge of a lot of capital

I'm sure this took a lot of yeses along the way are you just a pizza hut lifer is this a dream come true for you well so I graduated from high school and upstate New York a small town called Plattsburgh

and I've lived in Hawaii my sister still live there. So my sister bought me one-way ticket. I moved back to Hawaii. I was 18 years old. I needed a job. She knew the assistant manager at Pizza Hut, and I started washing dishes at a Pizza Hut.

And at the Mapuna Puna Pizza Hut on the island of Oahu. So I started washing dishes. I was there a year. I became a cook, moved back to Plattsburgh, New York, and that's where I started working for Dalyon Corporation, who's had two pizzas in Plattsburgh at the time. got any shots you want to take a Papa John or anybody while you're here or just who's the worst no you know the other thing I would say is I think sometimes when people hear

the pizza at name they they see this big conglomerate and what they don't understand is really until last year pizza had only operated about less than 10 locations and I think they have about 70 now but you know the other the rest of the 5,000 are made up by people like me and you know We're just got guys and gals out, you know, trying to make a buck. And some of them are second and third generation folks now. And although I didn't have any family as part of Dayland, they consider me a second generation person now. But he's like Tom for the Godfather.

What's that? Sorry, go ahead. You've been folded into the family. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, yeah, right.

And, yeah, we're not some huge baseless chain. Most of us are guys like me and gals like me and that have, you know, some have a couple restaurants, some have 20. But we're not a big faceless chain. We're just somebody who's trying to make great pizza. And it's certainly a competitive segment, you know, of the food industry. Do we have one in Texas? Or we got any plans to get one near DFW where we're at? I don't own any.

We're in 11 states. We're not in Texas. So I can't speak to what they're doing down there. I do know some franchisees that are down there that actually excellent, excellent operators. So you're in pretty darn good hands, that's for sure. I know it. Trust me, brother. I'm, uh, I see you.

I see your people weekly. Well, thank you so much, sir, for taking the time to do this. It's a cool initiative and good luck out there. Thank you, guys. I appreciate your time. Thank you so much. Oh, yeah. There he goes.

Avoid the noid. Tim Sparks. Yeah. We should have asked him about the noise. That's all I thought. about is the annoyed that's all i think about every day though one more a couple more quick things here from the news um ask me ask yourself if this has ever worked so we recently found out that the painting in downtown dallas of those wails is called the wailing wall why does this keep

happening it's the same thing as when they said that the dallas offensive line of the 90s was called the great wall of dallas but in any case it has been covered up for the the World Cup. And now two seniors at Booker T. Washington have started a petition. Oh, yeah. Because high school

kids around here have loved the way the wall for so long. Yeah. So is it just covered or did it get painted over? Like it's ruined for it. It's painted over. They're trying to get funds through this petition to get a new

wall and have him paint new stuff on it. I don't know if it has to be whales or what, but and to pass... Can you get IMP to do it? IMPB. I am POV. But I think they're also trying to get them to pass laws to where you can't

just go... I can't not think of this story through the lens of Rufus from bumfights. I don't even remember if it was... Hey, quit painting me, man. You paintin me when there's painting the guy, the homeless guy who's asleep. You're not a big bump fights guy.

No. No. You're pining me, man. I passed that wall yesterday, and the front is all gone, right? But the side looks like it was still untouched last I saw. So I'm wondering if they leave a couple whales. You can see a half of a whale that was going around the corner. Like, I don't know, like, maybe as a small, you know, nod to what it used to be,

like leave the side untouched. And then all the high school kids that love the whale painting that go out there so regularly to look at it. They can still look at the side of it. Cut out the blowhole, you put your face for it. I blame sports. Hey, idea. Idea. He got hit us.

I like it. No. We're backing up a little bit. So we've done dice. We've done, how about bum fights? It's not a bad idea. We got to watch one and review it. This was a major part of your upbringing.

Like Sam Kittenden really meant a lot to me. probably the same age that you were watching bum fights. Yeah. Okay. Then we'll have to do the off air on air. I'm not, I was not, I've seen bump fights, but to act like this is something that I was super fired up about is not accurate. So it won't, like, unless we just have to, I have to carry this lie all the way through.

I mean, no, listen. No, that's terrible. Like, did you also hate faces of death? No, I mean, and I watched, I've seen, like I said, I can't finish this story. because I'm laughing. I just pulled up the video of them painting the guy when he's asleep. It's very funny. But to sit and watch like a couple hours of it, it will, it's not fun.

Tell me like the helicopter crashes at least. Oh, yeah. I mean, Jackass. Yeah, no, listen, I've got video of me replicating jackass, right? Okay. Video? No, we ran it out of the Alamo. You've seen me wrecking shopping carts and getting shot the dick with a BB gun.

but the homeless thing it's like it is funny but I don't I'm not gonna I was not like a huge let's you know But it was funny when he went on Dr. Phil It was that's but that's obviously like a very funny social commentary type

And bum fights is funny dude I quit painting me They just the guy's see it They just start spray painting him Jerry Springer you're actually into that Yeah Okay yeah Next you're gonna tell us you weren't into Frazier

Ha All right. The dums, a dung.