First off, I do like their pizza. It's good. Especially, the crust. Definitely worthy of being mentioned in a best pizza thread. However, I don't really know their history, but when I think Mellow Mushroom I think about the one in Tuscaloosa and the one in Birmingham. Both have a local "pizza joint" feel - at least they did at the times I visited years ago. Plenty of character, a nice beer selection, and poor looking college students that you would trust making a proper pizza.
Then, I think about the one in Jackson and the one in Germantown. Same pizza (I think?), but they are massive and have an Outback or some other large stale corporate restaurant feel to it. It feels forced and awkward. I wanted to bang my head against the wall when I went to the Germantown location a few weeks ago. I was an idiot in assuming that my previous experiences could be duplicated in Germantown, Tennessee. As you would expect for the location, it was filled with a bunch of families with their pre-teen and teenager kids. Plus, there were far too many pairs of crocs in one building for me to be comfortable. Not that there's anything wrong with teenagers and crocs - it's just not my preferred environment when going out to eat and that scene is so much different than my previous image of the place (moderately diverse poor college students vs. soccer moms, SUVs, and suburbia). They did have Dogfish Head on tap - that helped me get through it...
Has it always been this way and this is the norm for a Mellow Mushroom? Or, did they finally just expand their market from local pizza joint to large-scale chain restaurant?
Great pizza and beer though...