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March 3, 2025
MARSHFIELD – A local couple recently took their food truck business one step further, opening a brick-and-mortar restaurant on the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point’s (UWSP) Marshfield campus.
The Hungry Hub – which held a soft opening in December 2024, followed by a full opening in late January – offers breakfast, lunch and snacks from 7:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. on weekdays.
Tony Andrews, campus executive at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point Marshfield said The Hungry Hub helps fill a significant void left in on-campus dining when the university’s last food vendor left in August 2023, and it’s open to all.
“This is an attraction for everyone, not just the campus population we’re serving,” Andrews said. “We have a built-in constituency, but it’s open to an even wider constituency outside the campus.”
It’s a community its owners, Bruce and Sherri Winer, said they know well.
The couple – who has lived in the area more than 40 years – said their family is well known around town for a variety of entrepreneurial endeavors, from son Erik Winer’s Mill Creek Gardens, to a family lawn care and snow removal business, to Bruce, Sherri and son Adam Winer’s “The Daily Special” food truck.
Cooking up an idea
Andrews said he was first introduced to the Winers’ cooking while at his chiropractor’s office.
He said one day while there, he noticed the office staff enjoying some “delicious-looking food.” Andrews said when he inquired where they had purchased it, they directed him a few miles down the road to where The Daily Special food truck was serving food that day.
When he made the trip down the road to try the food himself, Andrews said he was impressed – with the Winers and the food truck’s menu.
He said he told Adam that he’d love to have The Daily Special food truck on campus once or twice a week – an opportunity Andrews said Adam said he’d think about.
Andrews said he also discussed the opportunity of creating a brick-and-mortar restaurant in available space on the 114-acre campus.
“He said he wasn’t interested in the restaurant opportunity, as he was a one-man show with the food truck and really just getting going,” Andrews said. “But we left the door open to have him on campus as a food vendor.”
Two weeks later, Andrews said he received a call from Bruce, thanking him for welcoming the food truck on campus a few times a week.
Then, Andrews said, Bruce mentioned that Adam told him about the on-campus restaurant opportunity.
“Bruce said, ‘That’s the other reason I’m calling, as we are interested,’” he said. “So we set up a meeting to come down and take a look at the space.”
What came next, Sherri and Bruce said, was a bit of an adventure, having just supported the startup of the food truck in August 2024.
The newness of getting that going hadn’t quite worn off yet, Sherri said.
“The food truck was always a dream of our oldest son, having cooked for several years in different facilities but wanting to be a business owner,” she said. “He wanted to take that on the road and be creative in what he could do every single day with The Daily Special food truck.”
The vision for The Daily Special, Sherri said, was to offer an ever-changing menu of ordinary foods made in non-ordinary ways.
Instead of a regular eggroll, she said The Daily Special offers bacon cheeseburger or reuben egg rolls, for example.
The Winer family said they had just gotten the food truck rolling a few months before, recognizing the opportunity to serve great food while also creating awareness of what the community had to offer.
“Some people don’t have an idea of the businesses we park at and what they have,” she said. “(Having a food truck) has helped to open the community to different community offerings.”
Filling a need
The Winers said broadening their definition of community from the food truck to the campus was a natural process.
And in doing so, the couple said they have received great feedback not only on Adam’s dishes but also on the current state of food accessibility on campus.
“So many students said that if they have a break, they run to McDonald’s as it’s the fastest thing to do even though it’s on the other end of town,” she said. “It made it clear that having something on campus would be beneficial – to (provide food options) right here without running out and making it an affordable option as well.”
Andrews said the space the Winers are leasing is a business incubator space, something many people don’t realize exists on the UWSP Marshfield campus.
The incubator’s goal is aligned with other incubators throughout the state, existing to help start-up businesses innovate and grow through a variety of ways.
In the case of a restaurant, the Winers said the incubator offered them an opportunity to start The Hungry Hub at a reduced cost than if they did so with a typical market property with an extended-term lease.
The Winers said they saw it as an opportunity to approach the restaurant business differently.
“We wanted to do something different, innovative and creative that hadn’t been done before,” Sherri said.
Andrews and the Winers said leading up to The Hungry Hub’s opening, they hammered through the details – recognizing the opportunity to offer regular meals for not only students and faculty but others who visited the open campus regularly: walkers who walk the “trail” throughout the building during the winter months, conference attendees, theater-goers and more.
In addition, Andrews said he saw an opportunity for The Daily Special’s following to become aware of an on-campus offering as well.
“I saw this as a perfect partnership as they had a following, and we have a built-in audience, so this could work synergistically,” he said.
Bruce said that synergy extended to the food truck – which began using the restaurant as its home station for operations – as well as the menu and even what to name the restaurant.
“We wanted this to be a hub – for people to come hungry and have this central location where students and the community come and gather and eat,” he said.
Andrews said the Winers also took a cue from the community and its origins in choosing the restaurant’s name.
Central Wisconsin – including Pittsville in particular – Andrews said, was the central place for railroads to ship cargo back in the day, and Marshfield earned the moniker of “Hub City” as an outgrowth of that.
And so, the trio said, the Hungry Hub was born.
A pitch of creativity
As for The Hungry Hub’s menu, Sherri said, was an exercise in creativity as well.
“We knew we wanted it to be nutritious and not have a lot of fried foods, while also keeping in mind what students and the community want to eat,” she said.
The Winers said they followed suit with The Daily Special in serving a rotating menu, not repeating anything from day one through late January, and counting.
Bruce said the menu consistently offers soup specials, salads and sandwiches, while swapping out fan favorites – such as pancake tacos made with fruit, a banana split boat made with yogurt, a Big Mac salad and a variety of pizzas, which are a favorite for meetings.
“People like just about everything, with some saying it’s the best they ever had,” he said. “The other day, I had a guy in whose wife prides herself on making a good grilled cheese and he said, ‘You did it better than she does.’”
The Winers said they’re working on their “forever menu” with some baseline options complemented with a special every day.
The couple said they purchase locally whenever possible – be it homegrown lettuce from a Rice Lake aquaponics business or cheese curds from Masonville.
Sherri said she hopes to offer different soups and salads throughout the season as well.
Bruce said he’s looking forward to spring and summer and the local farmers’ markets, which will serve as treasure troves for new menu items.
The Winers said The Hungry Hub also offers catering, whether that’s different snack items during concert intermissions or food options during meetings, including pasta bars, taco bars and chicken dinners.
All of the above, Andrews said, have been extremely well-received.
“Students, faculty – everybody loves it,” he said. “We hear great things about the food, the service, the professionalism. It’s something they were born to do.”
Nutrition is top of mind with Bruce behind the grill, so much so that he said he purchased and is reading a book specifically about cooking for athletes so he can best support the Wisconsin Conquerors Football Club – the semi-pro soccer team that practices, trains and plays its outdoor season on campus.
With an uptick in enrollment and retention on campus and the campus abuzz with activity, Andrews said the timing is right for The Hungry Hub.
The Winers’ willingness to learn and their decades of entrepreneurial experience, he said, will serve them well as they settle in.
“People know this family – they know this family is successful and has done this (entrepreneurial undertaking) before,” he said. “This is a new venture but they know how to put businesses together. The Marshfield community knows them, loves them and loves how they run their businesses.”
