Drive along County Road J in White Bear Township this month and you will pass a storefront that used to sell tacos and margaritas, now serving burgers and bourbon under a different name. Not far away, a storefront painted black and orange smells like grilled hot dogs and plays to a hometown crowd. And the restaurant that has fed this town since 1976 just told its regulars it is opening a second location in the southern suburbs, not because business here slowed down, but because business here never stopped.
That is the part worth sitting with. Storefront turnover usually reads as a warning sign, a town losing its footing one vacancy at a time. What is actually happening in White Bear Lake this year is closer to the opposite. The people filling these spaces already live here, already know the regulars, and in one case are literally handing a lease from one local operator to another. The churn is homegrown. That is a different story than the one most towns are telling right now.
The Space That Wouldn't Sit Empty
MC's Taco & Tequila closed at the end of 2025, and by April the same building at 1190 County Road J in White Bear Township had a new sign: Cooper's Kitchen & Spirits. The new owners are Trever Peerson and Tim Trochman, and Trochman already runs Rusty Cow Café in Circle Pines. That detail matters more than it looks. This was not a national chain scanning a vacancy report and picking White Bear Township off a spreadsheet. It was an operator who already had a restaurant up the road deciding this specific corner was worth a second location.
Peerson described the goal plainly: a place that "feels like your go-to neighborhood spot from day one." Burgers, sandwiches, shareable apps, a whiskey and bourbon list behind the bar. Nothing revolutionary on the menu, and that is the point. The building did not go dark. It went from one local kitchen to another without ever losing its lights.
Who Opens A Restaurant For The Team They Grew Up On
On the same stretch of County Road E East where Donatelli's has served pizza for decades, Bear Dogs opened this spring at 1595 County Road E East. The founders are brothers Logan Neal and Connor Podewils, both graduates of White Bear Lake Area High School, running it alongside their parents Ryan and Nicole Podewils. The walls are painted black and orange, there is a bear on the wall, jerseys hang near the tables, and the whole place is built around the idea that there was not enough somewhere in town to sit down, order a hot dog, and watch a local game.
Connor put it simply: "we are homegrown, we love White Bear Lake." The business already teamed up with the White Bear Lake boys and girls lacrosse programs to run food at tailgates, and it showed up at community events like Kidz 'n Biz over in Hugo within its first weeks open. This is not a concept imported from a franchise deck. It is two brothers who grew up going to games here, building a restaurant around the fact that they still do.
Put those two stories side by side and a pattern starts to show. When a storefront empties out in White Bear Lake right now, it is not staying empty long, and it is not being filled by outsiders guessing at what the town wants. It is being filled by people who already had skin in the game.
The One That's Leaving, Sort Of
Then there is Donatelli's, which flips the whole pattern around. Steve Donatelli opened the restaurant with his brother in 1976 at 2692 County Road E East, a small operation with a one page menu and four employees. Fifty years later, Steve and his wife Trish Appleby are still running it, and the place has become the kind of institution where staff know regulars by their drink order even before they know their name.
A few days ago, Donatelli's announced it is opening a second location in Bloomington this September, on West 78th Street. That is the restaurant most towns would expect to watch a chain arrive to compete with. Instead White Bear Lake's oldest independent kitchen is the one expanding outward into the metro.
Appleby has talked before about what keeps the original location the way it is. Her framing was that the restaurant is not something she and Steve own so much as something they are "stewards of for the community and our employees." That is not the language of an operator cashing out a hot brand. It reads like a couple who built something slowly enough that leaving is not really on the table, even as they add a second address.
What's Still There
None of this churn has touched the places that were already anchors before this year started. Rudy's Redeye Grill is still on Highway 61 North with its rooftop bar and pan-fried walleye. Acqua Restaurant & Bar still holds its spot on the lake's western shore, the same Italian menu Daron and Nicole Close opened back in 2009. Brickhouse Food & Drink and Washington Square Bar & Grill are both still downtown, and Admiral D's is still serving its waterfront patio through the warm months.
Those five did not need to reinvent anything this year. They are the steady baseline against which the newer arrivals are getting measured, and so far the newer arrivals are measuring up fine.
The Actual Story Here
A resident scrolling past a "best restaurants" list built by an algorithm somewhere else would see none of this texture. They would see star ratings and category tags, not the fact that MC's became Cooper's without the building sitting vacant, or that two brothers built a sports bar around the lacrosse program they used to play in, or that the restaurant that has fed three generations of White Bear Lake kids is now confident enough to open a second kitchen in Bloomington.
What all three stories share is direction. The people opening restaurants here already had a reason to be here first. The people expanding are expanding out, not being replaced from outside. That is a specific kind of stability, and it does not show up in a five star rating. It shows up in who signs the lease.
If you are new to town, or thinking about which corner of White Bear Lake to spend a Friday night in, that is the read worth trusting more than any single review: watch who is filling the empty storefronts, and watch which direction the oldest names are moving. Right now, both point the same way.
If you are watching this same kind of local detail because you are weighing a move into or out of White Bear Lake, that is a conversation Maisa Olson has with clients regularly, using the same close attention to the town's actual rhythms rather than a generic market summary. Book a free valuation consultation when you are ready to talk specifics.
