Lazy Day Cafe
Address: 2020 East 3300 South, Suite 23/24
Telephone: 801-953-0311
Website: lazydaycafe.net
District: Millcreek
“This place kind of saved my life in a lot of ways.” For Candice Pulli, the warm, welcoming, and unpretentious Lazy Day Cafe has never been only a restaurant. Tucked back from the road in Millcreek, it became a source of stability, family, reinvention, and community for Candice and her children during some of the most difficult and transformative years of their lives.
Candice was born and raised in Salt Lake City and had an idyllic childhood shaped by supportive parents, outdoor adventures, skiing, and a strong sense of family. Her father later retired as assistant police chief of Salt Lake City, while her mother worked as a hairdresser and became, in Candice’s words, “our family cheerleader.”
Years later, Candice found herself raising three children largely on her own. She had married young, had Alex and Anthony, divorced, then later had her youngest son, John. “I was in survival mode for so many years with the kids,” she said. At the time, there was no clear career path, only the daily work of keeping life moving forward.
Lazy Day Cafe entered her life almost accidentally. Candice had known Cheri Watts since the 1990s when the two met while working at Squatters and Cafe Bacchus. Over the years, they worked together at various restaurants and remained close friends. After the death of their friend and chef Garry Maxwell in 2009, the loss brought many people back together. Cheri returned to Utah from Oregon, and she and Candice began doing small catering jobs together. While searching for catering equipment, they came across a listing for a cafe space. They looked at it once and passed. About a month later, it appeared again. This time, they decided to take the leap. “We opened in November of 2010.”
The restaurant space itself had a long history. For decades it had been Wally’s Donuts before becoming a revolving door of restaurants. By the time Candice and Cheri arrived, the place had been abandoned and was in rough shape. Fryers still held old grease, dry goods sat forgotten in the pantry, and the dining room was dark and worn. They deep cleaned everything themselves.
Money was limited. “We had $1,000 and hopes and dreams.” Furniture and decor came from their own homes, scratch-and-dent IKEA finds, and the generosity of friends. Cheri’s husband, Luke Watts, built shelves and enlarged the kitchen window so customers could see into the back. The name came unexpectedly. They had brainstormed many ideas, several connected to Garry Maxwell, when Cheri suddenly suggested Lazy Day Cafe. "It simply felt right."
From the beginning, the restaurant became a family and friends operation. Cheri ran the kitchen while Candice handled the front of the house. Candice’s children worked wherever they were needed. Alex hosted, served, and helped with bookkeeping. John began bussing tables at age twelve. Candice’s mother worked in the kitchen as “the pancake lady.” “It was very much all hands on deck with our family,” Candice said.
The early years were exhausting. Neither Candice nor Cheri had truly run a kitchen before. Cheri, despite being a wonderful cook with a remarkable palate, struggled at first with breakfast service. “She cried for the first two months,” Candice remembered with a laugh. Cheri arrived around five in the morning and often they stayed until evening, doing everything themselves.
Even then, Lazy Day quietly stood apart. Cheri’s father-in-law raised pigs that supplied the cafe’s pork products. They sourced eggs, lettuce, and other ingredients locally whenever possible, sometimes meeting farmers in parking lots to pick up produce. Candice said the goal was always simple: “We wanted people to eat there and then feel like it was a good idea.” She laughed describing those meals elsewhere that people regret forty minutes later. “We did not want that for our customers.”
That philosophy still shapes the menu today. Many of Lazy Day’s most popular dishes happened almost by accident. The lemon pancakes evolved from an overnight pancake experiment and eventually became paired with the cafe’s rich house buttermilk syrup. “We figured if people started dreaming about those, they would come back.” The shrimp and grits began as a Mardi Gras special before becoming a permanent favorite. The beignets, more like doughnut holes than traditional New Orleans beignets, also remained after customers insisted.
The menu has also grown alongside the family itself. Anthony’s partner, Jenny, who is vegan, helped inspire a larger vegan selection after she joined the restaurant. Candice understood firsthand how difficult it could be for families with different dietary preferences to eat together comfortably. Lazy Day became a place where vegans, meat eaters, and those needing gluten accommodations could all find something to enjoy together, while still being transparent about the realities of a working kitchen.
In 2016, Cheri stepped away to return to Oregon and help care for her grandmother, and Candice bought her out. The transition was difficult. The restaurant struggled through a revolving door of cooks, and Candice had to learn nearly every part of the business herself, including the kitchen. At the same time, her father’s dementia worsened, leading Candice and Alex to move in with her parents to help care for him until his death in 2019. Through it all, Lazy Day became the foundation beneath the family. “For us, as a family, the cafe has given us security and safety that we did not really have when the kids were younger.”
Today, Candice has been able to step back somewhat, trusting Anthony and Jenny to carry much of the day-to-day operation forward. She still shops, preps, handles payroll, fills in when needed, and takes care of repairs, but the next generation has taken on much of the responsibility. Candice beams when speaking about Anthony’s growth in the kitchen. “His sauces are fantastic. The salsas are great. He is very inventive.”
The cafe itself remains tucked quietly into the corner of a shopping center, the kind of place people once had to seek out before online maps became dependable. In the early days, customers were often sent to the wrong location entirely. Word of mouth built the business instead. Friends posted about it, customers shared it, and the community carried it forward.
When offered another location, Candice made the decision that she never wanted expansion to come at the expense of consistency. “People should have the same experience every single time,” she said. That same philosophy extends beyond the restaurant’s walls. She loves the growing brunch culture in Millcreek and appreciates the camaraderie among nearby small businesses, many of whom have known each other for decades through different chapters of Salt Lake’s restaurant world.
Looking back, Candice sees a restaurant that began almost by accident and slowly became the foundation her family needed. It gave her children responsibility, gave her security after years of uncertainty, and created a warm neighborhood gathering place where regulars return for lemon pancakes, shrimp and grits, vegan dishes, and familiar faces. “It has been a lot of luck,” Candice said, “and a lot of love that kind of put that thing together.”
