Pizza Hut Returns to Hammond After 2024 Northwest Indiana Closures

Pizza Hut’s return to Hammond put one of Northwest Indiana’s most visible chain losses back on the map, after 15 locations in the region shut abruptly in 2024 during a fight with franchisee EYM Group. The reopening at 7331 Indianapolis Blvd. turned a vacant former unit into a test of whether the chain can restore staffing, delivery volume, and customer traffic in a market where workers and regulars had watched the brand disappear almost overnight.

The Hammond site moved forward after a new franchisee signed a long-term lease on June 23, 2025, with remodeling set to start immediately and an opening targeted for late summer 2025. Pizza Hut’s location pages now list the address as an active store with dine-in, carryout, and delivery service, a sign that the brand did not walk away from the corridor after the closures. Instead, it appears to have reassigned the territory and kept the door open for a new operator to take over.

That matters for hourly crews as much as for the company’s balance sheet. A reopened Pizza Hut can bring back driver shifts, make-up orders, and evening rushes that vanished when the old stores closed. It also puts the brand back into competition with DoorDash, Uber Eats, and other delivery options that have reshaped local pizza work, where the difference between a busy Friday and a slow one can decide how many tips a driver takes home.

The closure wave began with a March 2024 lawsuit from EYM Group against Pizza Hut, followed by Pizza Hut’s counter-suit in June 2024 alleging unpaid royalties and other franchise-agreement defaults. Pizza Hut said EYM’s same-store sales were down 10% from 2019 to 2023, while the chain’s systemwide same-store sales rose 7% over the same stretch. The company also said EYM’s inspection failure rate ran at 12.4% from Feb. 21, 2023, to Feb. 19, 2024, compared with a system average of 3.2%, and that EYM was more than $3 million behind by the end of 2022.

The franchise reset did not stop in Hammond. On Jan. 28, 2025, a Dallas auction recovered just under $12 million for the bankruptcy estate, and by April 3, 2025, National Franchise Sales said 77 Pizza Hut restaurants from the former EYM portfolio had transferred to new owners. Pizza Hut now says more than 6,700 U.S. locations are open nationwide, and Hammond’s return shows how the chain is trying to stabilize troubled territories one storefront at a time rather than leaving them dark. The former site’s existing hood, walk-in cooler, and sink infrastructure made it a ready-made restaurant, and its spot less than half a mile from the I-80/94 and Indianapolis Boulevard interchange, with traffic counts above 26,000 vehicles a day, gave the new operator a built-in shot at quick volume.