Charlie Cadbery, Mia Fuhrman, and Elliott Johnson interviewed John Wiederholt of Wiederholt’s Supper Club in Miesville, Minnesota.

My grandfather started it [Wiederholt’s] around 1930 as a little gas station… bar.  He owned it till he passed away in 1954.  In ‘54 then my grandmother has it, so she knew she couldn’t run it so she leased it out. The person that had it had it for about a year and a half and it was not successful.  In the meantime my father had come back from the service and he had built the gas station across the street from here and he decided to sell the gas station and come and try to run the restaurant or the bar.  So he took the gas pumps out and made it, it was a grocery store [and] bar and then he put in the dining room. Well the building has changed a lot since then. My father became ill in 1969 with heart attacks… [he] couldn’t do this anymore.  He sold it in ‘71, in 1972 my dad died of a heart attack. In 1973 the people that bought it went broke, so I was a freshman in college, and my brother was a senior in college. And we did what we thought was the right thing to do. We quit college.

So I went into the kitchen, I wasn’t old enough to bar tend — I was 18 years old. At that time you had to be 21 in this state. I cooked and Charlie [my brother] bar tended and we had a lady that was a cook here for a lot of years so she sort of taught me the ropes of the kitchen.  This went on for 3 years. My mother couldn’t get it sold and my brother and I sat down one day and said, “Well what the hell? Why don’t we buy it?” So we bought my mother out in 1976.   Charlie runs the bar, I actually do the kitchen.

Good early memory? Probably paying the bills and having some money left over. *Laughs* Oh it was very hard work; this is a hard business.  You work when everyone else plays. And if you don’t figure that out you’re broke.  I mean, when all my buddies, I’m 18 years old, and they call on me to go out on Friday/ Saturday night, and I’m here working it sucked.  I mean it sucked, but if you didn’t work when everyone else is playing, that’s when you make your money.  Ummm, I work Christmas Eve.  We do a town party, Christmas Eve. We put a spread of hors d’ouevres out and drinks.  We give ‘em drink tickets, a couple drinks. So you work your butt off that day too, until you get ‘em out of here and then you go home and have a day and a half to do your Christmas.

We manage by example, I guess is a good way of saying it.  We’ve both worked as bartenders, cooks, so we’re just another employee.  We don’t walk around with a shirt and tie or whatever and manage, we’re actually are diggin’ in, and I’ve never asked my help to do anything that I won’t do. You know, so I think that you’re respected for that.

[The woman who taught me to cook] was a great teacher, great role model.  She always said to me, “John you’re the owner but I’m the boss.”  She ended up working with us for some 40-some years.  With my father, and the people who were there before us.  So, 89 years old I think, and she came and celebrated her birthday here a week and a half ago and she’s doing great.  She had 13 kids and every kid worked here.

Well there really isn’t a definition for a supper club.  What I call it, it’s a lot of the time rural.  Um… back in the olden days was, you know, relish trays on the table.  Garlic toast. Usually entertainment on the weekends, fish fries on Friday, usually an evening place. Not open for lunch. You call ahead, you book it, when you walk in here your tables ready. Your relish trays are on, your crackers and your garlic toast… all ready for you.  It’s a destination restaurant.  We’re not located like you would locate your chains or whatever on the main drag.   We do a lot of family celebrations. We’re a real upscale roadhouse, I mean, we’re using all high-end beef, all of our seafood products are very high end.   My dad had a rib-eye steak and a t-bone steak that wasn’t choice… I wanted to change it.

[Our food is] American. Yeah. Our dressings too, they’re pretty unique.  We make all of our own dressings from scratch. We bake our own cakes. We do a little birthday cake for celebrations.   All the dressings and the rib recipes came from a chef back in the 50’s.  This is before my time.  I remember that his first name was Bob.  That’s all I can tell ya.  I wasn’t involved in the restaurant then, that was when my dad had it.  So it was probably in ‘56, ‘57, ‘58.  That’s where all of our dressings and our ribs, yeah.

I think our baby back ribs are [unique], because of the fact that we have a smoker in the back.  Falls off the bone and you eat it with a fork. We go through about 450 pounds of prime rib a week. [I] put Alaskan king crab on [the menu].  I’ve added halibut, oh Ruffie, salmon.  The prices’ve really changed.   Chicken Kiev, we make our own Chicken Kievs now.  We make our own homemade soups now.  Oh that’s all, that’s all new.  Boneless chicken breast is new.  We have a senior menu and we use the same quality food in a smaller portion for the seniors.  And our dressings, they’re quite unique.  We do a French Roquefort, which is quite different.  There’s a lot of French dressing but we do a blue cheese with it.  Um we got a good ranch dressing, a good Caesars, we make a good thousand island. Um we got honey mustard.  They’re all good.

In the 70s and early 80s yeah 1 o’clock in the morning you’d have to beat them out of here with a stick. Oh it was fabulous.  You know the bands we had here when we were twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five, I mean the building shook and it worked, but we got old, we didn’t want this anymore, you know?  Well we’ve had entertainment every Friday and Saturday for 50 years… we stopped it 15 months ago.    We thought we’d try it and see if it made a difference in our business, because people weren’t staying for bands anymore, you gotta drive a long ways out here for a band, drinking and driving laws, things have changed.  We eliminated our band, hasn’t changed our business at all, we can feed 400 people on a Saturday night.    Now we’ve made a decision, we’re not going to have entertainment anymore.

Our clientele’s changed, Um… in the 70s our clientele were, I would say the average age was maybe 40. I’d say our average age now is maybe 55.  We still do fine. We’ve been doing celebrations for families in groups for, you know, years and years and years. I got a group that we do their Easter; it started out with maybe 20 people, now its 55 now. We’ve been doing it for maybe 35 years.  I mean there’s been people coming here that walk in for, there’s been people coming here for fifty-five years.  We did their weddings they talk about, you know?  They’re seventy years old, they got married here fifty years ago.  Back in the old days there wasn’t spots to have weddings.

The restaurant industry took a big hit in 2008 or 9. I can’t remember, years go by. We went 35 years and we never had a year that our business went backwards. It grew every year for 35 years.   I think it was 2008 is when everything hit a wall, the whole industry did.  A lot of the people I talked to are seeing a little growth now.  It’d be sad if it [closed], you’d hate to see it leave the community.  It’s sort of a cornerstone for this area.  It employs 60 people. The Miesville lions club, this is where they meet.  The Miesville fire department, this is where they meet, this is where they do their fundraiser, for the fire department.  We have a baseball team in Miesville, this is where they do the fundraisers, to create money.  And, sorta the local hangout, you know?

[The generation in college now was] brought up in chains. The chains are restaurants, I mean, whether it’s an Applebee’s or Outback or what ever it is, the Buffalo Wild Wings, you guys, McDonalds, you [were] brought up in chains.  It seems to me that the trend of your age group gets them into this atmosphere.  I think the chains have gotten really good, you know?   They weren’t very good twenty years ago.  They’re good now.  I mean, your Outbacks, these places; they do a good job now.  The problem you have for us to compete against them, they have buying power.  I’m a one store… guess who’s going to get the best price?   I know they’re buying the same crab as me for six dollars a pound less.   How do you compete with [them]?

We’re a little calloused after 38 years, and I guess running out of energy.  I mean I was hungry when I was…shit I was [20].  I was running around trying to get every banquet I could get, knocking on hotels, doing whatever I could to drum up some business.  I don’t do that anymore.  Sort of tired, don’t need to do that anymore.  Not quite as ambitious, that’s what young people do.  There are some things I do if I was young and doing this.  Maybe have a karaoke night, do brunch, probably be open Saturday for the noon hour, there’s a little traffic then.  Those are the things I would do.  I don’t want to work more.  We used to work sixty, seventy hours a week.  I don’t want to do that anymore.  But a young person would have to do that, get that young crowd coming in to this place.  I need some young blood.  Somebody to take this thing over.

Gone.  Yep.  [Supper clubs will be] pretty much gone. Yeah, they’re just…they don’t work very well any more… they’re a dying breed, they’re a dinosaur.