Forest Lake Country Store undergoes rebrand

Rich Palzewic

Staff

June 9, 2025

LAND O’ LAKES – To better describe what it represents, the Forest Lake Country Store (6256 County Road B) in Land O’ Lakes recently underwent a rebrand, now known as Forest Lake Café & Wine Cellar.

The name change, Co-owner Keely Rubingh said, was in part to end confusion for newcomers and patrons who haven’t visited the area in a while.

“We’ve had some confusion, so we want to be clear that we are not a grocery store, a convenience store or a bait shop,” she said. “We had people coming in asking for bait, and this place, literally, hasn’t sold bait in more than a decade. We also had people asking about gas – there was maybe a gas pump here for about five years in the early 2000s. We just wanted a fresh start.”

As for the new name – Forest Lake Café & Wine Cellar – Keely said they wanted to keep “Forest Lake” in the name because it’s a good description of the area.

“Forest Lake Road is right across the street, and there is a community of people who live on Forest Lake,” she said. “We went back and forth on whether to call it a cafe or restaurant, but we thought the new name sounded nice.”

It wasn’t until after about a year of ownership that the couple said it dawned on them the name wasn’t necessarily a good indication of what they offered.

“We were open for a year with the old name, and it didn’t really come into our minds until the busiest time of the year, something wasn’t clicking with our customers,” Joe said. “We also had people coming in looking for eggs to buy. We also had people drive by not knowing we were a restaurant. They would come later and be like, ‘Oh, I’ve driven past this place a dozen times and never stopped because I didn’t know you were a restaurant.”

The couple said they’ve received nothing but compliments about the rebrand.

“It’s definitely been the right choice,” Keely said.

A peek inside

Keely said the establishment’s main focus is the café – offering food and drinks and a few other amenities.

“We took over ownership in October 2023, and things have been going great,” she said. “We have a lot of support from the community, so we feel the rebrand represents more of who we are.”

Before taking ownership, the couple said they owned and operated the RBA food truck in the area.

“Because of that, people knew who we were,” Joe said. “We’re open year-round, but business ebbs and flows with the seasons. We’re busy during the snowmobile season and all summer long, and we have good days during the other parts of the year, too – it all depends on Mother Nature.”

Joe said this past winter was slightly better than the previous winter regarding business.

“We probably had a solid month of good conditions for snowmobiling,” he said. “It wasn’t great, but it was definitely better than the previous year.”

With the café portion of the business, Joe said they try to be a “bit different” with their options.

“We try to be a little different than everywhere else but still approachable,” he said. “We get everything we can locally, which isn’t very easy to do sometimes. We also pride ourselves on making everything from scratch – that’s the focus of the kitchen.”

The wine side of the business, Keely said, is also a bit different.

“We’re a small community, so we provide something other than what our local grocery stores have,” she said. “We have a variety of wines in the store that are easy to pick up for customers.”

Keely said the previous owners had added wine to the repertoire, and when they purchased the business, she and Joe wanted to keep it as an option.

“Wine does well in the store, and Joe and I both like to drink wine,” she said. “We like learning about it. It’s interesting to hear about the different vineyards and processes of making wine.”

Though the focus is mainly on wine at Forest Lake Café & Wine Cellar, Joe said it does offer other alcohol.

“We have beer and liquor as well,” he said. “Our beer selection is a bit smaller, but we carry Rocky Reef (Brewing Company) beer, which is out of Woodruff – they have really good beer. We also have a small liquor selection, but we mainly focus on having a really good wine selection.”

Keely said the restaurant has a full bar, featuring wine and alcohol from the store available to dining patrons.

“Most of our wines are from California, Oregon and Washington, (and then) a few from the Midwest and Europe,” she said. “It’s easier to sell wine or, really, anything for that matter, if you’re selling something you also like.”

The couple said Chocolate Shoppe Ice Cream is also available at Forest Lake Café & Wine Cellar.

“We have three year-round employees, and then in summertime, we have about four people who work for two months – (people) who either come home from college or live up here in the summer,” Keely said.

A smooth transition

As previously mentioned, Joe said owning the RBA food truck helped make the transition to ownership of Forest Lake Café & Wine Cellar easier.

He said they ran the food truck for about four years before selling it last year.

“Before I moved here, I worked for a food truck for about 10 years,” Joe said. “Keely had the idea of starting one here because we felt the Land O’ Lakes area could use some different food options.”

Growing up in lower Michigan and in the Land O’ Lakes area, respectively, Joe and Keely said they know first-hand the ties a local shop has with a community. 

As a child, Keely said she and her family would often stop at the then Forest Lake Country Store to pick up snacks before they went to the beach.

“At that time, it was more of a bait shop and convenience store,” she said. “In 2001, new ownership took over, bought the property and built this new, beautiful building. It was kept as a bit of a convenience store – they had sandwiches, etc. And then in 2007, new owners turned it into what it is. They built it as more of a restaurant, had a following and had ice cream.”

When the property was put up for sale a few years ago, Keely said she and Joe knew it was their turn to guide it into its next phase.

“We’re revamping it back into being more of a year-round restaurant,” she said. “One of the complaints we had from people who had never been to the area before was that they didn’t know it was a restaurant. To me, growing up here, I knew the history and knew it had once been a restaurant.”

The couple said owning the RBA food truck was never the long-term end goal – “we eventually wanted to own a restaurant” – so taking the leap to purchase Forest Lake Café & Wine Cellar, felt like the next logical step.

“Though it wasn’t our long-term solution, we felt (owning the food truck) was the first step in the process,” Keely said. “When you’re applying for a business loan, you need several years of tax returns and profits and losses before they will even consider you for a business loan.”

Keely said when they started the food truck, they knew the business was for sale.

“The owners at the time asked us several times if we wanted to buy it, but we couldn’t (at that time), because we didn’t have those two years of tax returns to even go to a bank and get a loan,” she said.

From there, Keely said they “waited it out.”

“In the end, it worked for us, and we were able to get approved for a business mortgage,” she said. “We essentially made an offer and bought it. There was a lot of planning that went into it because we had thought about buying a restaurant for like eight years before we actually bought a restaurant.”

Keely said she thinks their work ethic has played a role in the success of Forest Lake Café & Wine Cellar from day one.

“We didn’t come from a background of having money to buy the restaurant, so we knew saving up money for something was the best approach,” she said. “We looked at restaurants in the area before we bought the food truck, and realized that, (at that time, it) was the route we could afford and give us those tax returns we needed to get approval.”

For now, the couple said they will keep investing back into the café and working to improve things.

“We want to make things better every year,” Joe said.

The Forest Lake Café & Wine Cellar is open from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday – with additional hours from 4-8 p.m. on Thursdays.

Visit the café’s Facebook page for more information.