TOWER—More than three years after it closed its doors in April 2020 at the start of the COVID pandemic, the Tower Café will soon be back in business. And probably no one is more surprised than Bob and Jen McDonough, who closed on the Main Street property this past Friday.
The couple, relatively new residents of Vermilion Lake Township, made the decision on a bit of a whim.
“We had driven past the café and the For Sale sign a hundred times,” said Jen. “We had talked about all the things the new owner could do. Then, in the spring, I turned to Bob one day as we drove past and asked if he’d like to take a look inside.”
They did a few days later, and almost immediately felt it was the right thing to do. “The building kind of made my heart skip,” said Bob.
Jen agreed. “We could see that this could be a piece of our lives and our mission of building stronger communities,” said Jen. “Running a restaurant has always been Bob’s dream so I left it to him to decide. He’s made every one of my dreams come true, so when he said yes, we did it.”
Since Jen announced the closing on her Facebook page, she said the feedback has been enthusiastic and positive. “We’ve been so overwhelmed at how welcoming everyone has been,” she said. “We have gotten the nicest notes from people. You can tell there’s real excitement about it.”
Indeed, the closure of the café three years ago was a blow to the community. The café was the only restaurant in town without a bar, so it provided a different atmosphere and served traditional café-style breakfast and lunch. It was known for good coffee, huge caramel rolls, and pancakes.
That’s a tradition that the McDonoughs now hope to bring back to Tower, although they say it will likely be a few months more before they can get the doors reopened. After being closed for three years, there’s some work to be done and they’re trying to respectfully go through all the personal effects that were left behind when the former owner of the café died suddenly due to the effects of COVID. Those belongings include tens of thousands of dollars worth of restaurant equipment and supplies, along with furnishings for the upstairs, which the former owner was in the process of renovating. The upstairs includes at least eight bedrooms or potential bedrooms, all but two with private bathrooms. They’re in varying stages of completion, but most are close to finished; some appear virtually ready to rent with a cleaning.
“We set a goal to be open by the first of next year but both Bob and I are competitive so maybe it will be sooner,” said Jen.
She said they’re looking initially at being open for breakfast Friday-Sunday, but would like to expand to five days a week after that, possibly adding a light lunch menu as well. The café, of course, is only part of the building. The upstairs includes multiple rooms that they plan to rent out on a bed and breakfast arrangement, but it will take some time to make that happen as well.
Both Bob and Jen currently work full-time, although Jen is pushing Bob, who has been with 3M for 39 years, to retire within the next few months to make way for his new gig as the host of a restaurant and inn.
Jen’s schedule is a bit more flexible and her background is impressive, as Bob will happily tell you. She’s a very successful book author, focusing on inspirational themes and personal finance, including three titles that all made Amazon’s Top 100 books. She’s written about her transition from a self-described “couch potato” to a top competitor in Iron Woman triathlons. She’s also an eight time Olympic-level weightlifting champion and likely would have made it to the Atlanta Olympics but blew out a hamstring at the wrong time. In her early years of weight-lifting, she used to compete against the men because there was no women’s division, and she still regularly medaled, including winning two national Olympic Festival medals. She also signed to play women’s professional football under coaches from the Minnesota Vikings, but had to give it up when she got pregnant with their first child.
Her most successful book, which hit Amazon’s number one slot for a time in the home budgeting category, describes how her family was able to erase $212,000 in medical debt in just four years.
She is also a regular public speaker on resiliency and is in demand at health care conferences around the country.
A winding road to Lake Vermilion
A child’s lifelong illness and a strong focus on family led the McDonoughs to the Tower area. Their second-oldest son, Rob, developed diabetes early in life and it was the medical bills stemming from his illness that left the family drowning in debt. That experience not only formed the basis for Jen’s most successful book, it brought the family north when Rob decided he wanted to attend Vermilion Community College.
The family decided to help Rob get established so they started searching for a fixer-upper in Ely with the intent of making it a home for Rob while he attended school. His stay at Vermilion ended up delayed by COVID so he spent a couple years working and saving money before starting at Vermilion. Meanwhile, the family had found a place near Pike Bay that felt right to both Jen and Bob, so they decided to buy it as a vacation home.
The family was well-established and happy in their longtime home on a lake in Lindstrom, north of the Twin Cities, and they had no intention of leaving their home there. But over the next couple years their new Up North house came to seem more and more like home.
“We love it here,” said Bob. “Lake Vermilion is the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen.”
When Bob, one day, suggested they think of moving to the area permanently, Jen didn’t hesitate. They sold their home in Lindstrom and the home of Jen’s mother, who lived nearby, and now the entire family, including Jen’s 84-year-old mother Marge is living here. Three of the couple’s four boys, 23-year-old Ryan, 22-year-old Rob, and 13-year-old Remy, are also living here, while their third child, 20-year-old Max, is doing an accounting internship in the Twin Cities.
“It’s really lovely to be able to blend the generations,” said Jen, who said her mother is as happy as they are with the new home.
Meanwhile, Rob recently graduated from Vermilion and now works full-time for the DNR in Gilbert.
As the McDonoughs see it, family is the most important part of their life— and it’s supposed to be an adventure. The next iteration of the Tower Café could well be their latest and greatest.