Paintbrush in hand, Joe Comes, new owner of the Perry Pizza Hut, gave an update Monday on progress toward reopening the longtime Perry restaurant.
“As you can see, there’s extensive remodeling going on,” Comes said, as his crew cut insulation for the largely gutted northeast section of the building.
“The dining seats aren’t here yet,” he said, “but we have a crew training in other stores who will come in here and hit the ground running.”
A new roof for the structure is also planned once the weather cooperates, Comes said.
He expects to employ 22 to 25 workers, both full- and part-time. At least a couple of former employees of the Perry outlet will be returning, Comes said, although he could not say for sure because he employs an “area coach,” who handles human-resources duties.
“If anyone is wanting to apply, we will have a representative at the store on the 29th, taking applications and running delivery driver MVR reports,” Comes said.
The delivery car has been “lettered up,” he said, and might be making free deliveries for the first 30 to 60 days after the grand opening, now planned for July 2 or 3.
“People often think of Pizza Hut as just pizza, pizza, pizza,” Comes said, “but we want to be known for pizza, pasta, wings. The pasta layer was added and few years ago and has been profitable, and we’ve always had baked wings but now we’re bringing in new fryers, and the wings are a lot better, all eight flavors of them.”
Comes said he has found Perry a friendly place since spending time here over the last few weeks and hopes to give everyone a warm welcome in a few weeks more.
