Bronk’s Lake City

This place was on Restaurant Impossible with Robert Irvine.

Anyone go here? Before and after?

Been there lots of time prior to the make-over and was never un-happy with the eats. We’ve beeen watching the progress on the days we have to travel thru Lake City. Should be interesting.

The FW and I tried it last summer. We where both so impressed with their burgers that we made a special road trip two weekends later with the bronks being one of our planned stops.

I watched the show last night also and a trip to lake city is in the planning stages to have a burger. Hope they do well.

We used to really like it there. Good food, decent prices and a nice place. Their potatoe skins were fantastic.

We stopped right after the “renovation” and were very unimpressed. 75% of the menu including the skins and a kids menu were removed. They made us sit in the “cocktail lounge” for 15 minutes even though the restaurant was empty, and after looking at their new menu with all $10 burgers we left without eating and let them know our feelings.

I will problably try them again to see if their food is still good, but they took a great hometown type place and tried to make it upscale metro style by painting the walls.

I may be the only guy to think like this, but I liked low key with good food. I don’t like cocktail lounges and my kids don’t need $10 hamburgers and then add $3 fries.

I feel bad for your kids Farmboy. Everyone deserves a $10.00 burger.

I don’t even deserve a $10 hamburger, and God forbid my kids try to spend some of my moldy money. It needs to be kept in my mattess where it belongs

I wish them the best of luck if that is the direction they want to go, and they can make money and keep the place open. I can certainly understand if they needed to downsize their menu, save some money on inventory, open a cocktail lounge, and try to do some things differently to make some money. I would not fault any business for doing things to become viable.

I do get it. I run a business and I also try to make money. I do feel they took it just a little too far for a small town place. I hope they can find a middle ground, bring back a few of the items they were known for, let me sit down without being pushed into a cocktail lounge. Heck, I have even been known to order a beer or 3 before, but I want to do it at a table, not in a teal green and orange corner of the bar.

Kind of a catch 22. They spend all the money to hire the consultant and then what? Do you follow their advice? Do you just tweak your operation a bit to include some but not all of their suggestions? Ignoring the idea’s altogether just puts them where they were before they hired them.

It’s the type of question business people face everyday. How do I take care of my customers and still make enough money to pay the bills, grow, AND sock some away. I struggle with the same thing trying to operate up here when my large customer base is in the metro.

Hopefully all the press and buzz created translates into a success for the owners. I wonder if the consultants contract includes a % of sales after the re-opening for a period of months or just a flat fee?

As far as I know, they arent hired consultants. It is a reality TV show. They have a budget of $10k and try to “fix” a restaurant in 24 or 48 hours.

As I understand it [and this comes from Lake City residents] Broncs was in a state of near bankrupcy. This was done to supposedly try to dig them out of a financial hole.

Personally I loved the place as it was. I also feel that making this an “up-scale” place where the only “up-scale traffic they have is during the sailing season is about as smart as leaving the door unlocked at night. There are an awful lot of old regulars that will not be going back since nothing that they considered to be “thier usual” is on the menu any more. Lots of the old crowd were retirees.

The lounge idea won’t fly because Lake city has a couple old watering holes where things don’t change…there won’t be many from the old places wandering over to Broncs. A good friend and a group of her cronies met at Broncs every week for a session, without fail, since forever. Not a one of them liked the food and not a one of them will be going back according to her.

I do know that if I walk into an empty dining area and was taken to a bar to wait I’d be out the door in way less than ten minutes. This might fly in the cities but in rural Minnesota? I see the place closing soon as it was probably going to do anyway.

These renovations and menu change everyone is talking about musta been done after my Wife and I went there. Anybody know when it was done? We where there early June last summer…

This was done just a short while ago…within a month.