60 years after opening, Tampa’s first Village Inn remains a family affair

TAMPA, Fla. - When Dow and Mary Sherwood moved to Tampa, he set up a welding business, but felt the city was really in need of a breakfast spot. 

"My dad knew nothing about cooking," recalled Mary Kay Sherwood Walker. "My mom was Italian and she was the cook and when he came down to Tampa, he told my mom that this town needed a pancake house and my mom thought he was in middle-life crisis."

In 1961, the Sherwoods opened Tampa’s first Village Inn. 

"When people knew my mom was in the back, they knew the food was coming out good and hot," Sherwood Walker said. "My dad was quite the showman and he would entertain the front of the house. He was very personable. He was very charitable. It’s an extension of who we are. There are two things that hold us together -- consistency and being personable, so when people come in, we try to know who they are."

When Sherwood Walker and her sister Virginia Sherwood took over the restaurant in the 1980's they worked to keep it a family affair.

"We've always felt that there are two things that hold us together, consistency and being personable," she said. "So, when people come in we try to know who they are. It's a family affair, and that's important to me."

Tampa's original Village Inn – the one along Dale Mabry just north of Kennedy Boulevard – has been passed down to three generations of the Sherwood family.

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"My grandfather passed away in 1987 and there still isn’t a day that goes by that someone doesn’t pull me aside and tell me a story about him or my grandmother," said Jim Walker, one of the current Village Inn operators. "When they started coming here as kids and now they’re bringing their grandkids here and how much the place means to them."

"I started working here as a busboy when I was 8 or 9 years-old," Walker recalled. "Coming here, I don't feel like I'm going to work, I'm coming home."

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His son, Dow Walker, has taken on some of his great-grandfather's role as a greeter up front welcoming the guests.

"You see the same faces every day, it's great," admitted Dow, he's named after his great grandfather, "It means something that these people come back every day."

The Sherwood Walker family is planning a 60th-anniversary celebration soon. 

LINK: Learn more about plans for the anniversary event here.