Pizza Hut is bringing back its old-school dining room look in 38 of the 93 restaurants run by Daland Corporation, and for Tim Sparks, that means red cups, a salad bar, checkerboard tables and Tiffany-style stained-glass lamps are back on the menu. The retro remodels, called Pizza Hut Classic, are part of a push to restore the chain’s former feel for customers who remember the brand at its peak.

Sparks, president of the Kansas-based company, said he had wanted the chain to return to its earlier identity for years and that the response has been strong. “I have been wanting Pizza Hut to return to its former glory for years,” he said, adding that the revamp is meant to bring people back into the dining room and that, “It’s a good time to start having dinner together.”

The effort taps into a brand with deep American nostalgia. Pizza Hut was founded in Kansas in 1958 by brothers Dan and Frank Carney after they borrowed $600 from their mother, and it has since grown into more than 16,000 restaurants in more than 100 countries. The throwback dining rooms also feature promotional materials for the Book It! program, which was established in 1984 and still encourages children to read more by rewarding them with pizza.

Until recently, only a handful of Pizza Hut locations kept the classic look, making the return stand out more sharply. The revived décor has spread well beyond the restaurants themselves, with bloggers posting videos and photos that have gone viral and a YouTube video on the trend drawing enthusiastic comments. Sparks said the reaction has been overwhelmingly positive and that people seem to respond immediately when they walk in.

“Everybody gets super excited,” he said. “There’s a lot of feel-good to it for sure.” For a chain that once helped define family dining in the 1980s and 1990s, the question now is not whether nostalgia exists, but whether enough customers will choose the dining room again to make the comeback stick.