Forgotten Michigan Pizza: Spad's Drive-Thru Legacy

Many Michiganders hold a deep nostalgic about the low-cost hamburger chain Hot 'n Now. Founded in Kalamazoo, the drive-thru only restaurant mushroomed quickly around the state and into national expansion.

A Michigan chain also attempted to bring the Hot 'n Now style experience to pizza. It sounds like a gangbusters idea. So what happened?

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The chain was Spad's Pizza by the Slice. There were several locations in Grand Rapids, Muskegon, Lansing and reportedly as far away as Bay City.

The Hot 'n Now Connection: Spad's Drive-Thru Model

The chain used former Hot 'n Now locations and maintained the quick service, drive-thru service. Here's what a location on Pennsylvania Ave in South Lansing looked like in the early to mid-1990s.

The chain sold a single slice of pizza for 59 cents, a similar price point to a single burger at Hot 'n Now.

Spad's Signature: Slices, Sticks, and Soaked Sleeves

Spad's pizza came in a cardboard sleeve that often soaked up its weight in grease.

As much as the pizza, many remember the chain for Spad's sticks, breadsticks flavored, rumor has it, with Gordon Food Service Italian Dressing.

So what happened to Spad's? It may have been much simpler than what happened to the burger chain. Hot 'n Now, which was sold to the Pepsico corporation (becoming corporate sisters with Taco Bell) causing a disruption to the chain's basic menu and core tenets that caused many franchises to fold. The fate of Spad's is a little more basic. It was reported to be a family matter.

Here's a rumor shared on a Reddit thread discussing the chain:

the owners were a couple who got divorced, it was an ugly divorce and they split the company but refused to work together. One of them refused to sell the business because they weren't getting as much as they wanted, so they filed bankruptcy and closed almost every location. Few remained open until the other spouse sued over naming rights or something like that so they closed the rest. Not sure how true, but that's the story I've heard from multiple sources.

If that story is true, we don't know who got the kids, but, sadly, no one got the pizza.

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While there appear to be no more truly tangible memories of the chain, the former location on Chicago Drive in Grandville is still doing pizza via drive-thru. Only now it's Little Caesars.