Breakfast at Mayville’s Sherwood Family Restaurant, which used to be a Pizza Hut

A few weeks ago, when I learned that the 2025 Milwaukee Film Festival (April 24 – May 8) would feature a documentary about businesses that occupy former Pizza Huts, my eyes lit up. “This movie is kind of a hard sell,” a Milwaukee Film staffer sheepishly said during a press preview event. I disagreed: I instantly knew exactly what kind of movie this would be.

Why? Because you can totally tell when a business is housed in a former Pizza Hut. The squat architecture! The shingled roof! The trapezoidal windows! An 82-minute documentary on the subject? Sign me up.

The documentary in question is Slice Of Life: The American Dream. In Former Pizza Huts, directed by Matthew Salleh. It tells “the origin story of Pizza Hut and its iconic architecture interwoven with a collection of stories from new businesses thriving inside the walls of former Pizza Huts.” There’s an LGBTQ+ church in a former Pizza Hut. A cannabis dispensary in a former Pizza Hut. A karaoke bar in a former Pizza Hut. The film will screen twice during MFF25: Saturday, April 26 at 10:30 a.m. at the Downer Theatre; and Sunday, April 27 at 2:30 p.m. at the Oriental Theatre. (Get your MFF25 tickets HERE.)

My mind reeled as I thought about a tie-in article. Maybe I could document former Pizza Huts in Milwaukee? Maybe I could take a road trip and document former Pizza Huts across Wisconsin? Hell, maybe I could expand my search to the entire Midwest! But then I remembered:

There was a former Pizza Hut in my hometown of Mayville, Wisconsin. And I would be in Mayville over Easter weekend. Huh. Let’s just do that, then. Sherwood Family Restaurant—a small breakfast-lunch-and-dinner place that occupies a former Pizza Hut at 1145 Horicon St. in Mayville, Wisconsin—here I come.

Let me get something out of the way: I have no journalistic proof that the building currently occupied by Sherwood Family Restaurant was formerly occupied by a Pizza Hut. I have no property records, no newspaper articles, no Google hits, nothing. I only have my memories, and the memories of every other aging Mayvillain. I remember the smell. I remember the red pebbled tumbler cups. I remember the cocktail table arcade with Pac-Man and probably Galaga. I remember the pizza.

And that’s all I need, because, well, just look at those windows. This place was absolutely a one-time Pizza Hut:

When was it a Pizza Hut? The 1980s. When did that Pizza Hut close? Sometime in the mid-’90s before a McDonald’s opened next door. (This was a big deal in mid-’90s Mayville.) Sherwood has only been around since 2014; what was the location before 2014? I’m pretty sure it was another family restaurant, and another family restaurant before that. [EDIT: A friend/Freund reminded me that post-Pizza Hut, the location was a restaurant called Bumpy’s. R.I.P. Bumpy.] But that’s not important. What’s important is that at one time, it was a Pizza Hut. Yes, it was a Pizza Hut. I’ll die on this hill if necessary.

Anyway, Sherwood is great. It’s the kind of no-frills greasy spoon (I use that term in a good way) where your order comes up fast and the server calls you “hon.” It’s small and cramped and always packed. The menu is overstuffed and the prices rarely exceed $12. The coffee is hot and forever refilled. The small town vibes are fantastic. The “this used to be a Pizza Hut, didn’t it?” vibes are fantastic, too.

My breakfast on Easter Eve (Holy Saturday, for those Catholics playing at home) was simple: a Country Breakfast—two eggs, two strips of bacon, two sausage links, a half order of biscuits and gravy—for $9.95. No muss, no fuss. I scarfed it down in five minutes. It was sublime.

I thought about grabbing a slice of pie on my way out, but the lone server was busy and a sign on the cooler warned me to “NOT” help myself. Another time, perhaps.

I haven’t seen Slice Of Life yet, but I’m excited to check it out this weekend. I’m excited to look back on dimly lit chain restaurants that served pizza in 200-pound cast iron pans, and gave you a free personal pizza if you read enough Hardy Boys books. I’m excited to see what those places are today.

“It’s the power of transformation,” an interviewee says in the Slice Of Life trailer. “When things continue to transform, beauty can come from it. Good things can come out of it.”

Oh, and here’s another quote from the trailer: “But those damn windows. Pizza Hut windows.”

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