Berryland Cafe in downtown Sumner has closed

Lola Burslie’s rhubarb pies will be no more at 1101 Main St. in downtown Sumner.

Berryland Cafe, the charming cafe known for its excellent pies, closed June 30.

Lola and Nolan Burslie opened the restaurant about 20 years ago with a menu of American diner fair.

The cafe was widely known for its rhubarb pies — Berryland Cafe is located in the rhubarb capital of the world, after all — but the rhubarb pies they originally served came from a food product company.

“I ordered them from Sysco. They were so thin. They were just horrible,” said Lola Burslie in 2013 while discussing the story of her cafe’s pies. Surely she could do better herself. So she did.

She started making her own pies sometime around 2008.

“I tried probably five or six times. Finally, I got it right,” she recalled.

Rhubarb was something of a pie gateway drug. Soon, she expanded the pie menu.

“Then I thought, there are so many things I like out there in the world. Raspberries and marionberries. So I did raspberry and tested it a few times. I tested the marionberry-rhubarb. I did apple.”

Before long the whole family was roped into pie making. Her son picked blackberries in the summer for the pies. The family would get peaches from Yakima for their summer pies. They baked the pies at night after the cafe closed for business for the day.

Burslie said in 2013 that pies were a love, but she knew it was not a great moneymaker and being a restaurant owner would never be hugely profitable.

“I’m never going to be rich,” she said. “Pies aren’t going to make me rich.” She added, “It’s nice to make people feel good.”

A note on the door of the restaurant declares their next life chapter, “We are retired! Gone fishin’. Thank you for being a part of our family.”