SISTER BAY — The famed Door County “goats on the roof” restaurant and gift shop is making plans to celebrate its 75th anniversary with the community and visitors this summer.
Al Johnson’s Swedish Restaurant & Butik has scheduled a major celebration on its property over the weekend of June 22-23. It’s been owned and operated by the same family for its 75 years, which is plenty impressive in itself, but it’s known around the world for the live goats that reside during the day on its green sod roof from late May through mid-October each year and help make the business a Door County destination.
More details and activities will be announced on the restaurant’s website and Facebook page, but the current schedule includes live music by local jazz/blues icons Big Mouth & The Power Tool Horns and Swedish-American alt-pop duo 7000apart (he’s a Green Bay Preble High School graduate, she was an exchange student from Sweden at Preble). Also part of the entertainment is folk dancing by the Stoughton Norwegian Dancers.
Local tourism professionals noted the impact Al Johnson’s has made in drawing visitors and attention to Sister Bay, Door County and Wisconsin, as well as its ability to not only remain open but thrive for 75 years despite operating in a rural community with heavy tourism mainly for just five months of a year, from May through October.
“Al Johnson’s has been a Door County icon for generations,” said Julie Gilbert, president/CEO of Destination Door County, in the news release. “A Scandinavian-themed restaurant with goats on a grass roof! The media attention Al’s generates, from TV shows to travel articles to social media posts, brings more Door County awareness to all corners of the globe.”
“Al Johnson’s has been the backbone of our community for generations,” Ellie Soderberg-Guger, community coordinator for the Sister Bay Advancement Association, said in the release. “The unique appeal of ‘goats on the roof’ actually makes a vital contribution to our economy, contributing to the livelihoods and work paths of local residents.”
The restaurant was founded by family patriarch Axel Albert Otto “Al” Johnson. He was born on the North Side of Chicago in 1925, and his parents sent him and his sister to Door County in the early ’30s to spend summers with relatives in the Appleport area east of Sister Bay.
“One of my favorite memories in those years is picking berries in the huge strawberry fields,” Johnson said shortly before he died in 2010, according to a press release, “then jumping on my bike for a three-mile ride to Emma Husby’s tavern for a black cow (root beer float).”
Johnson served as a paratrooper in the U.S. Army 101st Airborne during World War II and was one of the first U.S. servicemen to enter the Auschwitz concentration camp after its liberation in 1945. He was discharged in 1946 and attended Marquette University in Milwaukee, during which time he briefly worked behind the dining counter at a Woolworth’s five-and-dime store.
While working at Woolworth’s, Johnson picked up some business techniques that would transfer a few years later to his new restaurant. For example, cooks didn’t get orders written on a pad by wait staff; instead, wait staff shouted out the orders. It’s a system Al Johnson’s continues to use today.
Al Johnson’s Swedish Restaurant opened in 1949 in a former IGA store on Bay Shore Drive (State 42) in downtown Sister Bay, where the restaurant and its associated businesses continue to operate today. Those businesses include the Butik (the Swedish and Scandinavian clothing and gift shop); Stabbur, a family-friendly beer garden that opened in 2015; Kök, a quick-serve food service operation (2016); and SKÄL, a Nordic-inspired standalone store (2020).
Perhaps the most noteworthy change, the one that led to Al Johnson’s becoming a world-renowned destination in Door County, came when Johnson and his wife, Ingert, decided in 1972 to import logs, carpenters and woodcarvers from Norway and build an enhanced, much larger building around the original restaurant structure.
That redesigned building included a green sod roof.
When the building and its associated structures were completed, a friend of the Johnsons, Wink Larson, who habitually gave Johnson a birthday joke gift, gave him a pet goat for his birthday.
That gift, named Oscar, ended up on the new sod roof the summer of 1973, for the Door County tourism season. And goats have grazed the sod on Al Johnson’s roof every summer since and become arguably the most famous tourist attraction on the Peninsula. The goats even can be watched via live webcams on the roof that stream on the restaurant website.
Johnson died in 2010, and the business has been managed since by his three children, Annika, Rolf and Lars, while his widow, Ingert, remains involved in the business.
Al Johnson’s Swedish Restaurant & Butik is at 10698 N. Bay Shore Drive, Sister Bay. For updates on the 75th anniversary celebration or more information, call 920-854-2626 or visit aljohnsons.com or facebook.com/AlJohnsons.
Contact Christopher Clough at 920-562-8900 or cclough@doorcountyadvocate.com.
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This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: Door County ‘goats on the roof’ restaurant plans for 75th anniversary