No joke, Tuscaloosa’s Mellow Mushroom is returning April 1.

Andy Croy, owner and general manager of the reborn restaurant, said doors will open at 11 a.m. and, for the time being, won’t close until “everyone is fed.”

“We’re super-excited to be back in Tuscaloosa,” Croy said.

A longtime fixture at the corner of University Boulevard and 23rd Avenue, the new Mellow Mushroom is now at the former site of Post Office Pies at 557 20th Ave.

And with a new location comes improvements to the service, including technological upgrades to the kitchen to get orders out faster.

“I can get a pizza out in six minutes,” Croy said. “Can’t go there for lunch because it takes 45 minutes? Not in my place.”

Croy said he plans to open with more than 100 employees, a fully stocked bar and a menu familiar to Mellow Mushroom fans.

As renovations have taken place in recent months, Croy said several passersby have stopped in to inquire about the opening and express excitement about its return.

He said he welcomes every encounter, especially when they come during a particularly hard day.

“It changes every day for me,” he said.

A native of Waterloo in north Alabama near Florence and Muscle Shoals, Croy is a University of Alabama graduate who worked as the general manager of the Mellow Mushroom on University Boulevard from 2011 until 2013.

He then moved to Atlanta and worked for Home-Grown Industries of Georgia Inc., the franchise’s corporate headquarters, opening more than a dozen Mellow Mushroom locations across the U.S. before joining the Goodman Group, a franchisee that operates four of the restaurants in Jackson, Mississippi; Destin, Florida; and the Birmingham area.

Croy was in Tuscaloosa when a deadly and devastating tornado struck the city on April 27, 2011, and he said that event galvanized him to the area and its people.

When Tuscaloosa’s first Mellow Mushroom closed in August 2017 after 18 years, Croy saw his chance to come home.

“It really felt like the stars aligned,” Croy said. “There’s just something special about Tuscaloosa and the community.

“That’s why it was so important for me to come back home.”

Reach Jason Morton at jason.morton@tuscaloosanews.com or 205-722-0200.