Source : Mankotopress.com
A new brewery in St. Peter will begin serving up sudsy delights next month while a Mister Car Wash in Mankato will be sudsing up vehicles by the end of the month.
Meanwhile, the Petco on Mankato’s hilltop is closing while the locally owned Pet Expo has recently been named the best pet retailer in the United States.
The Skin Clinic MedSpa on Belgrade in North Mankato is going through rapid growth.
The Cheese & Pie Mongers are closing their St. Peter site and consolidating near Lake Crystal, while the former Shell store on Lor Ray Drive in North Mankato has new ownership.
Paddlefish Brewing Co.
The brewery, at 108 S. Minnesota Ave., has been a busy place recently as workers put the finishing touches on the interior in preparation of a Jan. 10 grand opening.
“We have done a lot in the last days — tap insulators, a paint job, wall murals,” said Dave Long, who along with Eric Johnson and brewer Luke Dragseth are opening St. Peter’s first brewery.
The brewery grew in size from what the three first envisioned. They were planning to use the middle section of the Nicollet Plaza building but soon saw they needed more room and expanded the business all the way to the large windows that look out at Minnesota Avenue (Highway 169).
Long said they are pleased with one inside wall that was peeled back to show the original brick.
“The north side wall of our taproom is all brick from the original building. You can see the layers of the past on that wall. It’s pretty cool.”
The brewery uses a five-barrel system and they hope to have seven or eight beers on tap when they open.
The names of some of their creations so far are odes to the building and the area’s history.
Red Owl Amber is a nod to the Red Owl grocery that once occupied the building.
Engesser Lager is a hat tip to the old Engesser Brewery in St. Peter
Almost Capital is a reference to St. Peter originally being slated to be the state capital.
Jolly Giant Hazy gives a nod to nearby Le Sueur’s Jolly Green Giant.
“We’ll have food trucks most days we’re open and hopefully all the times we’re open,” Long said.
The brewery (paddlefishbrewing.com) will be open Wednesdays through Sundays.
Johnson, then a senior at Gustavus, spearheaded the idea for the brewery and recruited his friend Dragseth as the brewer. They then reached out to Long, a brewery fanatic who has business management experience.
Johnson is originally from Paynesville and Dragseth was raised in Milwaukee, meeting Johnson while at Gustavus. Long is from the Twin Cities area.
Dragseth said in an earlier interview that growing up in Milwaukee, he knew family and family friends who brew beer at home and commercially.
“I grew up around it in Milwaukee and started brewing at home,” Dragseth said. “Then I started creating my own recipes and refining them.”
Long also has a long history of interest in breweries and brewing.
He’s been to at least 145 breweries in Minnesota alone and in the mid-200s nationwide.
As for the brewery’s name, Johnson said it was inspired by an article he read in The Free Press, with the headline “Paddlefish prefer St. Peter as a hangout,” which told of a sizable population of the unique fish in the Minnesota River around St. Peter.
“It was a fascinating story, and when I did more research, I discovered there is this growing population of paddlefish here.”
Petco closing; Pet Expo ‘best in U.S.’
Petco, which has had a sizable presence in the Mankato Heights strip mall that contains Old Navy and Michaels near the intersection of Madison Avenue and Highway 22, is closing after more than about a decade there.
The store’s last day is Jan. 20.
Tom Yenish, owner of Pet Expo on Adams Street, said that when Petco came to town and when PetSmart more recently opened a big store along Highway 22 outside of River Hills Mall, he was anxious.
“We were concerned. We started in 1987, we have a great following, but the pie is only so big. So when a big name brand company comes you have to pay attention.”
Mike Krause, who’s been manager of Pet Expo for 25 years, said the locally owned store has faced a barrage of competition over the years as big box stores like Fleet Farm, Menards and Walmart increased their pet sections.
But Pet Expo has not just kept its lead in the region but has now been named the best full-line pet store in all of America.
Yenish said there are two major pet retail shows in the country — Global Pet Expo in Orlando and SuperZoo in Las Vegas.
“We went to SuperZoo in August and found out we were voted the best full-line retailer in America.”
Victoria Morsching, marketing and events manager at Pet Expo, said she filled out a nomination submission this spring for the honor. “I filled out an application that was 10-plus pages and sent some videos and our social media and examples of events we do,” she said.
“Now all our employees have shirts and jackets saying ‘Best pet store in America,’ “ Yenish said, including some with the “Top Dog” logo created by Pet Product News.
Cheese & Pie Mongers moving
The Cheese & Pie Mongers will close their St. Peter location at the start of the year, owners Liberty Warren and Tim Harbo announced.
They will consolidate the operation with one they have at Welsh Heritage near Lake Crystal, where they and their family operate the apple orchard.
The Welsh location will be open year-round. Gift cards will be accepted at the Lake Crystal location.
The St. Peter shop has been open for nine years.
In the announcement they said they were running out of space in the St. Peter location and have a larger area and more parking at Welsh Heritage.
They said they were getting stretched too thin trying to run both locations.
New owners at Shell on Lor Ray
The former Shell convenience store and deli at 1711 Lor Ray Drive in North Mankato closed recently, while the pay-at-the-pump service remained open.
Now new owner Kamleshkumar Patel and manager Nikul Patel reopened the store this weekend under the name Andy’s Mini Mart.
They aren’t yet serving food in the deli, but soon will.
“We have to get our food license yet,” Nkul Patel said.
He said they will have a variety of grab-and-go foods and things like chicken wings and onion rings.
“We are really excited about it,” he said.
Kamleshkumar Patel owns or owned several convenience stores including in Sleepy eye, Windom, Austin, Waseca and several in South Dakota and Iowa.
Skin Clinic MedSpa growth spurt
Heidi Hermel has been going through a whirlwind of change and growth with her Skin Clinic MedSpa on Belgrade Avenue in North Mankato
In the past year, she and husband Andy have purchased several buildings, both for expansion of the spa as well as apartment buildings.
“It’s been crazy, the growth. I never anticipated it. I went from one employee — me — to 10. I think I brought in innovative, high quality care people want. I added wellness, weight loss and hormone therapy, which no one else was doing.”
She first opened a tiny space on North Riverfront Drive in Mankato in 2020. Then COVID hit and she closed. She reopened and her business quickly grew.
This year she purchased the building at 235 Belgrade, a new building with commercial on the ground floor and apartments above, putting her business on the ground floor. She also bought the space next door at 237 Belgrade that had housed Menari Body Works, which had moved to downtown Mankato. She expanded into that space.
And recently they bought the building next to that, which was formerly Mutch Hardware and was recently part of Neutral Groundz.
And amid the growth, they bought a new apartment building that has just been finished at 230 Nicollet, built by the same developer who built the new apartment/commercial building on Belgrade Avenue. “So now we’re landlords, too.”
Hermel said the former Mutch Hardware space will also become part of an expanded Skin Clinic MedSpa.
Mister Car Wash opening
A new Mister Car Wash is to open by the end of the month, with a 160-foot conveyor car wash — half the length of a football field — just west of Kwik Trip and Wendy’s at 1541 Madison Ave.
There will be 26 vacuum stations for customers to clean the interior of their vehicles and three lanes with pay stations leading to the conveyor.
Mister Car Wash, based in Tucson, Arizona, operates more than 400 car washes nationwide and has 25 years of experience in the business.
The two lots where it is located were once home to the Galilee religious books and gifts store and for a trio of warehouses dating to 1959 that were most recently used by ServiceMaster.
Other projects
Rapid progress is being made on renovating the former Norwood Inn in North Mankato to turn it into an apartment complex.
Just down Range Street at the former Dutler’s Bowling site a new apartment complex is also rapidly going up. That site is in Mankato.
There have also been building additions in North Mankato to Volk Transfer on Ringhofer Drive, RDO Equipment on Howard Drive and United Team Elite on Lookout Drive.
In downtown Mankato, Brennan Companies just broke ground on Silos apartment complex.
The development is on the corner of Plum Street and Second Street in Old Town. The building will feature 26 1- and 2-bedroom apartments, covered parking, and nearly 1,000 square feet of retail space.
Each apartment will have a private balcony and the fourth floor will have a community patio.
