How “The Buck Snort” became “The Blind Tiger”

By LeAnn R. Ralph

COLFAX —  It all started one Sunday afternoon during a Green Bay Packer game.

Jessica Cutler and Nick Anderson had been looking for a bar-restaurant to buy for four or five years, and they had heard The Buck Snort on Main Street in Colfax was for sale and wanted to check it out.

“We tried sneaking in one Sunday for a football game, after half time. We snuck in the front door. Neither of us had been in here before. I knew of Brenda and Dan, but we’d never really met. We came in and sat down,” Anderson said.

The stealth part of the operation lasted about three seconds.

“We knew everybody at the bar. Everybody was like, ‘Hey! Hi! How’s it going?’ We thought, well, we’re busted. We thought we were going to be incognito and just slip in. Then everybody started saying it was for sale. And then Brenda heard that, and she came over to talk to us,” Anderson said.

Anderson and Cutler met with Dan and Brenda Dahl several times after that to discuss the possibility of them buying The Buck Snort.

“From there, it took about a year,” Anderson said.

Anderson and Cutler took over the business and opened it as The Blind Tiger in October.

Anderson grew up in the Town of Wheaton near the Wheaton fire station. The family moved to Bloomer, and that’s where he graduated from high school. He earned a business administration degree from UW-Eau Claire, and he has been in the bar and restaurant business since 1999. He managed the Albertville Tavern for many years.

Cutler also is from the Town of Wheaton.

“I grew up right next to Custer Farms on T,” she said.

Cutler worked at the Albertville Tavern for quite a while as well and has managed other bars and grills.

Together, Anderson and Cutler have 26 years of experience in the bar and restaurant business.

Over the four or five years of looking, “we walked through seven places. This was the seventh,” Cutler said.

“The first time we walked through, that would have been November a year ago. We signed the 23rd of October and opened on the 26th,” she said.

“We got product in the door the morning of the day we opened. We had a limited menu for a week,” Anderson said.

“For the first four days, we had burgers and appetizers and those kinds of things. We had a soft opening just to get our feet wet. I had never bar-tended here, and Nick had never cooked here,” Cutler said.

“You have to get stuff set up the way you want it,” Anderson said.

“We had no idea how to gauge how busy we were going to be when we first opened,” Cutler said.

The second Friday The Blind Tiger was open, “we served 120 pounds of fish. We had nine tables waiting to be seated. We went through (an order) of Spotted Cow in 48 hours. I never would have guessed that,” Cutler said.

“There were people, it was a 45 minute to an hour wait. They said, ‘We can’t stick around because your kitchen closes at 10.’ And I said, ‘No, you’re going to stay here and eat because we’re going to cook for you.’ Nicked ended up closing the kitchen down at quarter after eleven, or something like that,” she said.

What’s in a name?

By now, you may be wondering how Cutler and Anderson came up with the name The Blind Tiger.

Or maybe you already know if you have recently visited the establishment.

Since the location of the business is in an older building, “we wanted to go with a Prohibition theme,” Anderson said.

“We’d been doing a lot of reading about it,” he said.

Prohibition, also known as the Volstead Act, went into effect in January of 1920, was repealed December 5, 1933, and was a nationwide constitutional ban on producing, importing, transporting and selling alcoholic beverages.

During Prohibition, “The Blind Tiger was big in Florida. The Blind Pig was more of a Midwestern (name). To get into a speakeasy, they either had a password or some weird exhibit in the back room. That’s where the term ‘blind tiger’ came up. ‘Hey, I’m here to see that blind tiger you’ve got in the back.’ That way, they knew you weren’t a government official or a cop. When you were looking at this blind tiger, you got a free shot of moonshine (or whatever they had) as part of the exhibit,” Anderson said.

The drink “was complimentary. You were paying for the exhibit,” Cutler said.

“That was a way of getting around the law. We thought it was a catchy, cool idea (to name the business The Blind Tiger),” Anderson said.

“It always makes people ask. They say they will come in just to find out where we came up with the name,” Cutler said.

“We’d been tossing the idea around … and the more people we talked to, just tossing it around, the more people said they thought it was a really neat idea, and that locked it in for us,” Anderson said.

“We had the theme picked out before we had the bar picked out,” Cutler said.

The story of The Blind Tiger’s name is posted near the door.

“The first week we were here, we were so busy running around, it made sense to us (to type up the story),” Anderson said.

“If anyone asked, we’d tell them, go look at the door,” he said.

Photographs

Many of the pictures on display at The Blind Tiger were from The Buck Snort.

“Brenda and Dan were kind enough to hook us up with the pictures and leave them with the building,” Anderson said.

In addition to locally important historical photographs, The Blind Tiger also has pictures on the wall from Prohibition.

The scythe and saws and other equipment on display that were features of The Buck Snort also were from around the time of Prohibition, so they fit in with the theme, Cutler noted.

One of the photos is a picture of a beer wagon and represents the first beer brought to the White House after Prohibition. Another photo depicts men marching in the street, carrying signs.

All Prohibition did “was run everything underground,” Anderson said.

“They went into hiding. Speakeasies were everywhere. (The taverns) had little tin signs that said, ‘closed for the national prohibition act’ and it included the city and state. They were at every tavern,” Cutler said.

The one on display at The Blind Tiger is from Chicago, Illinois.

“A lot of of the beer companies at that point just made soda. Leinie’s (Leinenkugel) did that. They made short little brown bottles that said Leinie’s on them but they were soda. That’s how a lot of the companies stayed in business,” Cutler said.

“Some of them switched to NA (non-alcoholic) or root beer,” Anderson said.

“They called them ‘dries,’” Cutler noted.

Blind Tiger burger

The Blind Tiger has kept some of the same menu items but also has expanded the menu.

“We kept what worked well for Brenda and Dan, and then we put our own twist on it,” Anderson said.

The menu has added a couple of different kinds of steaks and specialty sandwiches, for example, and The Blind Tiger Burger also is popular.

“It just a big, messy, fun-burger,” Anderson said.

“It’s a burger with Swiss and American cheese, bacon, fried onion, fried mushrooms and barbecue sauce on top,” Cutler said.

“It’s one of those burgers people like to eat because it’s just such a mess,” Anderson said.

The Blind Tiger buys hamburger meat from Sokups Meat Market in Chippewa Falls, and then they hand-patty it.

“We make a run to them twice a week minimum to keep everything fresh. They grind (hamburger) every morning, pretty much. So when we get it, it’s less than 12 hours old,” Anderson said.

“We’ve known (Sokup) forever. We are actually living in his house. We didn’t know it at the time. I was working with him before, and I said, ‘hey, I just bought a house in Chippewa.’ And he said, ‘where at?’ And I said, ‘Olive Street,’ he said, ‘what’s the address?’ (And when Anderson told him the address), he said, ‘That’s my old house!’ Coincidentally that’s how it worked out,” Anderson said.

The commute from Colfax to Chippewa Falls is 17 miles and is about a 25 minute drive, unless the weather is bad.

“It gives us unwind time. With a short drive, you get home, and you’re still amped up. This way you can zone out and relax and slow the heart rate down after a busy night,” Anderson said.

The Blind Tiger has not yet had a grand opening party, but Anderson and Cutler say they are hoping to have a grand opening this month yet.

The Blind Tiger also is planning specials for Valentine’s Day and St. Patrick’s Day, and they are hoping to do a Prohibition themed party for the anniversary of the repeal of Prohibition on December 5.

Clientele

Since The Blind Tiger is a combination bar and restaurant catering to families, Anderson would like people to be aware of what state law allows.

“We’ve had a couple of high schoolers stick their head in the door, and they are afraid to come in,” he said.

“As long as the kitchen is open, any age (customer) can come in. We serve more food than we serve (liquor) at the bar. You don’t have to be 21 to come in here. Any age can come in and get food. They were super timid. But it’s fine. As long as the kitchen is cooking, any age is welcome,” Anderson said.

“It was so cute. One of them came in and said, ‘can we come in here and eat?’ Of course you can! Come in and eat,” Cutler said.

“Our focus is more on food than the bar,” Anderson said.

“We have our night crowd too. It’s perfect. We have food. Happy Hour. Food. And then the night crowd. It’s always busy one way or the other,” Cutler said.

“Our focus is on families. Check out our Facebook page. We got a lot of good reviews from the girls’ basketball tournament. They ended up coming in and were super pleased with the service and the food,” Anderson said.

During Cutler and Anderson’s second Packer game at The Blind Tiger, a group of 25 came in. They set up the dining room for the group, even going so far as to carry two extra tables up from the basement. There were 13 kids, and they wanted their own table, Cutler said.

“That’s where our experience comes in. Parents are normally too busy trying to get food into their kids, let alone to think, how are we going to do the checks,” Anderson said.

“What I’ve always done with sports teams is, the kids are usually wearing a number, so I will write the number on the top (of the check), and then I’ll ask, ‘Who’s with no. 17? Who’s with no. 25?’ That works out well to use the jersey number,” Cutler said.

“It’s those little things that help make it run smoother,” she said.

Craft beer

The Blind Tiger also offers an assortment of craft beers.

“I didn’t know if it would go for the area,” Cutler said.

“Nothing too exotic but stuff we know sells other places,” Anderson said.

Spotted Cow for example. And Honey Weiss.

“We try to have a bit of a selection so there’s new stuff to try,”Anderson said.

The craft beers are from Wisconsin: Nut Brown Ale is made in Ashland; Badger Club comes from Madison; Lake Front is out of Milwaukee; Spotted Cow is New Glarus; and Honey Weiss is is from the Leinenkugel Brewing Company in Chippewa Falls.

“It’s been good. It’s been fun,” Anderson said.

“We’ve had a lot of fun,” Cutler said.

“We knew what we were getting into,” Anderson said.

“We knew the place was a really good fit for us. We knew the clientele. We knew what we were going to do. Before we had anything going with the bank, we had our menu typed up, and we were working on pricing,” he said.

“Our business plan was done. We used it for other places. We knew what we wanted from the start. When we walked through here, we could adjust the numbers accordingly,” Cutler said.

Dan and Brenda Dahl were great to work with, Anderson said.

“Dan said he was so happy and that he just really wanted us to get it,” Cutler said.

“Our resumes helped us out a lot with that whole process. It’s one of the riskier industries out there,” Anderson said.

While owning a bar might sound like something fun and easy to do, it is not.

“You hear that a lot. Someone is going to retire, and they still want something to do. ‘I know. I’ll buy a bar and just run that,’” Cutler said.

“That’s the reason so many bars fail. It’s a lot of time and a lot of hours (and requires knowledge of the business),” Anderson said.