No big changes planned at Waubee Lake Lodge

A popular business that caters to locals and visitors to the Lakewood area has new owners.

Although Darin Thompson and Jonathan Anita are new to the area, they already feel at home after purchasing Waubee Lake Lodge from Russ and Mary Kralovetz.

They officially closed on the business April 1.

The lodge, popular with local residents and visitors to the area, includes a restaurant, bar, a 17-suite hotel and four cabins and three lakehouses available for rent. It also hosts weddings, banquets and meetings.

Thompson is familiar with the Midwest, as he grew up in the Twin Cities, went to college at Purdue University and has family in the Chicago area.

He and Anita had corporate jobs in Texas.

“My partner and I decided we wanted to get out of corporate,” Thompson said. “We had enough and started looking at businesses. There are a lot of them for sale. I narrowed the search to Wisconsin and this place popped up.”

They eventually narrowed their search to three properties, including Waubee Lake Lodge.

“I know it was on the market for a couple years, but none of them were as solid as this one in terms of what the business is,” Thompson said. “The staff that is here is absolutely fantastic. I tell them every day that I’m delighted that they stayed on and that was a huge consideration in our deciding that we could do this.”

Thompson recalled screening thousands of potential businesses to purchase and operate.

“Many of them didn’t have pictures and if they did, it was some rundown shack,” he said. “For this one, the pictures were beautiful of the lodge, the lake. It was in Wisconsin in the northwoods, a great location. We said, ‘Hey, let’s take a trip.’ We came up here and visited, fell in love and decided to make it happen.”

Thompson and Anita began looking for properties in August 2025 and Thompson found the listing online in September.

“I started talking to the broker, and we got up here in October,” Thompson said. “It was beautiful. The leaves were changing, there was a wedding here and orange leaves were falling on the bride during the ceremony.”

Thompson spent almost two months with Russ Kralovetz before the change of ownership officially took place.

“He wanted to be able to close his books out for the quarter, and I wanted to get in before the busy season and have four to six weeks to get my feet wet even after having two months of transitioning with him,” he said. “There are a lot of things we do differently, but there’s a great thing happening here, and we want to build on that. We don’t want to change it.”

That means the lodge’s popular Friday fish fry and broasted chicken dinner on Sunday aren’t going anywhere.

“Like my grandfather always told me, ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,’” Thompson said. “Our intent is to carry it on. We’ll put our own style on it here and there. We just reprinted the menus, so everything’s on there that’s always been on there, including Russ’ Bang Bang Shrimp. We’re going to add things, and there will probably be changes, but they’re going to be well thought out.”

Thompson is looking forward to the upcoming tourism season, which includes a wedding just about every weekend.

“A few days before we closed, I booked a 2027 wedding for August,” he said. “This year, we’re booked every weekend from the second or third week of May through the end of October. We have a banquet hall downstairs, and the weddings are out in the yard overlooking the water. People come from miles around to book their wedding.”

Thompson wants to offer more corporate events.

“Part of our growth plan is to bring more companies in to do their team building and corporate retreats, particularly during the week from January through March,” he said. “They stay in the lodge, and we can do their meals up here. I believe most of them now are Wisconsin-based, but I want to extend down to Chicago, Milwaukee, the Twin Cities and Green Bay. We want to let companies know that we’re here with a beautiful place for you to come and have your retreat.”

Thompson admitted he has a lot on his plate overseeing a restaurant, bar, hotel and cabin rental business.

“You have to be able to multitask and roll with the punches,” he said. “No. 1 is great people. Russ curated a fantastic staff. There are 31 (employees) right now and we have more coming in for the summer. I lean heavily on my staff. They know how this place runs, and they’ve been here for years. We had our bumps in the road, but we figured them out.”

Thompson already had to shovel sidewalks during a blizzard in late March and an ice storm in early April.

“Russ was the second owner, I’m the third owner and someday, somebody else will steward Waubee into the future,” Thompson said. “We have a responsibility to keep it going. “The locals, the regulars — everybody we meet up here — are fantastic. They’re nice, they’re friendly, they’re very supportive. We can’t express our gratitude enough to the locals for supporting the business.”