LaCrosse Café: Hazel's Place closes, new tenants sign lease

LaCrosse’s Teapot Café closed in 2012 after more than a decade in business. Since then, three proprietors have come and gone. A new lease was signed by Darlene Cates and Julie Roberts, former Dusty Café proprietors, and Soni Broeckel last week.

LaCrosse last month found itself once again looking for a café operator after Hazel's Place closed its doors Aug. 1.

“We are looking again,” Carol Cauley, a board member with LaCrosse Community Pride, reported in mid-August. “We've got to get somebody who really wants to keep it going. It takes a lot in a small town.”

Hazel's Place opened in May after William “Ty” and Kristl Tyler arrived from Wyoming in April and re-opened the café shortly after. The couple operated the business as a maker space and food business, with Ty's side of the business being more on the greasy side and Kristl's side geared more toward health food.

LaCrosse Community Pride owns the café building, among others in town, and rents it out to tenants. There have been troubles keeping a café operator in the last few years.

Prior to the Tylers taking over the operation earlier this year, the building had been vacant for more than a year after previous operator Barbara Curtiss stepped down due to health issues. Curtiss, who operated it as Route 26 Café, had opened in September of 2014 and stepped down in March of 2015.

Prior to Curtiss, the café had been operated from May 2013 to May 2014 by Joe and Dionne Evans, who stepped down to spend more time working on their ranch. They operated the business as the Grillbilly Café. Proprietors Cheri and Steven Garrett had previously operated it for more than a decade before closing in 2012 as the Teapot Café.

With Hazel's Place closing, a new lease has been signed and issued to Darlene Cates, Julie Roberts and Soni Broeckel. Broeckel is Roberts' daughter, and Roberts is Cates' daughter.

“Three generations are going to run it,” said Cauley. “The board approached them, and we've been asking them over the years.”

Roberts said she has been approached when the café has become vacant, and this time around, the timing was right.

“If you just let things go, it just falls into place,” she said. “It just all fell in one day.”

Cates and Roberts previously operated the Dusty Café from 1988 to June of 2005.

“We had an 11-year rest,” said Roberts.

The trio plans to operate the business as LaCrosse Café and plans to be open Tuesday through Friday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Roberts said they will have a daily lunch special and keep it as a short order business.

“I think a lot of people started big and then shrunk,” Roberts said. “And we're doing the opposite.”

When Roberts and Cates operated the Dusty Café, they had two Thursday nights a month where they were open later, and those were successful.

“The best we ever did was we had 142 people in there in a three-hour span,” Roberts recalled. “We might try for the Sunday crowd in LaCrosse or try evenings. That will just come. We've got to get our groove back.”

Roberts said they plan to be open the Saturday and Sunday when deer season opens the weekend of Oct. 15, and they will figure out other things as they go.

“I think this winter we'll have to figure it out,” she said. “Find our rhythm.”

Roberts said she has some ideas for getting traffic directed to the café from the highway, and also added that she has seen the community really support its businesses.

“LaCrosse has tried to support everyone that's been there,” she said. “They want to have it. I'm getting excited.”

They are aiming to open Oct. 4.