Last video rental store in Utah to close after nearly 40 years

Top Hat Video in Bountiful, the apparent last video rental store in Utah, is set to close in December after nearly 40 years in business.

“We are very sad about this closing,” the business owners said in a Tuesday social media post. “With there being so many ways to consume media digitally, physical media just can’t compete.”

Lona and Lee Earl opened Top Hat Video in the early 1980s and slowly built their business into a “community hub,” Lona told The Salt Lake Tribune in 2018.

“We’ve established a really good, loyal customer base,” Lee Earl said at the time. “We have customers that threaten us — ‘If you ever close, I’ll kill you.’”

With over 32,000 titles, including new movie releases, classics, family films and tons of TV series, Top Hat has been “a hot spot for cinematic discovery, date nights, insightful conversations, and family outings,” the Top Hat post read Tuesday.

“The connections made over loving a film (or despising) will forever be cherished,” it stated.

On Wednesday, manager Shanna Earl said that COVID-19 has been hard on the store, since “a lot of people are doing stuff online.” She added that the shop is closing in December in order to give customers who have bought prepaid rental passes ample time to use them.

Financially, though, “we probably should’ve closed a month ago,” she said.

As of Wednesday morning, Top Hat’s post on Facebook had 167 comments from people expressing their support, with one former employee saying he met his wife there.

“This is such sad news,” another poster said.

Shanna Earl said it’s hard to say goodbye to the community that’s supported Top Hat in the decades since it opened.

“And that’s really going to be the hardest part,” she said, “is just the relationships we’ve built almost over 40 years.”

Outside of video rental stores, the Tower Theatre in Salt Lake City previously offered a small selection of movies available to rent, but the theater is currently closed for renovations, and it’s unclear whether movie rentals will continue after the theater reopens.

The final day to rent a movie from Top Hat will be Dec. 31.

“Thank you all for your patronage and your love,” the Top Hat post concluded.