Stacey Poppe

[MLB @MLB]

Sal Stewart tallies 6 RBI in a big @Reds win in the Bronx!

[Steve Schmidt @SteveSchmidtSES]

“The story of this era isn’t merely that powerful men demand obedience. History is full of powerful men demanding obedience. The story of this era is whether enough Americans still possess the courage to refuse. Scott Pelley did.”

https://t.co/Z9Wlmg4gEc

[Lucas Sanders 👊🏽🔥🇺🇸 @LucasSa56947288]

RETWEET if you support Scott Pelley after CBS News has just fired him.

[Yaroslava @strategywoman]

Dnipro River today.

I haven’t lost my ability to notice beauty.
No war can take away the moment when we stand in awe and watch.

We are humans, just like you.

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

Pizza Hut corporate spent seven years killing the exact thing this guy is bringing back. And his stores are now some of the busiest in the entire chain.

Tim Sparks, President of Daland Corporation, is converting 80 Pizza Hut locations to the original 1980s format. Red cups. Salad bars. Stained glass lamps. Pac-Man machines. Vinyl booths. His first job was as a Pizza Hut dishwasher.

The Classics are massively outperforming standard Pizza Huts. Customers drive two to three hours to eat there. A single Facebook post about one Classic location in Pennsylvania got 7,500 shares and broke onto TikTok overnight.

Meanwhile, corporate is doing the exact opposite. 250 store closures planned for first half of 2026. "Red Roof" dine-in franchises no longer offered to new operators. Yum Brands is considering selling the entire chain. No obvious buyer.

The decline numbers are brutal. Pizza Hut held 25% of U.S. pizza market share in 1995. Today: under 14%. In 2019, half of traditional stores were still dine-in, but 90% of revenue came from off-premises orders. Corporate saw the mismatch and decided to eliminate the dine-in format entirely. Convert everything to delivery boxes. Compete with Domino's on logistics.

The problem with that strategy: Domino's is a technology company that happens to sell pizza. Their competitive advantage is order tracking, delivery optimization, and franchise efficiency. When Pizza Hut stripped out the booths, the salad bar, the lamps, and the experience, they became a worse Domino's. A typical Pizza Hut location now generates 20% less revenue than the average across the other four major pizza chains.

Their biggest franchisee went bankrupt in 2020 and closed 300 stores. Total sales haven't grown since 2004. Twenty-two years of stagnation.

And a former dishwasher is adding salad bars and Pac-Man machines, and people are driving across state lines.

The Friday night with your family in a vinyl booth under a stained glass lamp while the kids played arcade games and loaded up plates at the salad bar. That was always what Pizza Hut was selling. Corporate optimized it off the balance sheet. One franchisee who grew up inside the original version understood what the spreadsheet couldn't measure.

[WCPO 9 @WCPO]

Brandon Phillips officially retired as a Cincinnati Red on Saturday, just hours before he's inducted into the Reds Hall of Fame. The former second baseman played for the Reds for 11 seasons from 2006 to 2016. https://t.co/BovOVQTuPT

[Reds Daily @GetRedsDaily]

Reds fans showing up for @DatDudeBP one more time ❤️🥹

[Skyline Chili @Skyline_Chili]

He is really is Dat Dude 💯 #Red4Life

[Votto De La Cruz @EvilJoeyVotto]

Love you BP!

[Lindsay Patterson @LndsPatterson]

go reds!

[Votto De La Cruz @EvilJoeyVotto]

BP 4EVER ❤️❤️❤️

[MLB @MLB]

How about those @Reds?

[WINCINNATI @WINCINNATI_]

NATHANIEL LOWE WALK-OFF HOME RUN 🤯

#WINCINNATI

[Joe Danneman @FOX19Joe]

An emotional Brandon Phillips officially signs his one-day contract to retire as a Red.

[Cincinnati Reds @Reds]

Back on his infield.

@DatDudeBP

[Cincinnati Reds @Reds]

Forever Dat Dude.

#Red4Life

[Lindsay Patterson @LndsPatterson]

just a few people

[Jaron May @jaron_may]

Brandon Phillips once showed up at a local kid's youth baseball game after being tweeted at.

Now, he's retiring in the town he loves and being enshrined as a Reds Hall of Famer.

"This is where I belong."

@WLWT

[Cincinnati Reds @Reds]

What a special day 🥹

[Cincinnati Reds @Reds]

We love ya too, @DatDudeBP.