Relax, rejuvenate, unwind at the newly-opened Refinery Wellness Center

Rachel Kroeger

Staff

August 11, 2025

NEW HOLSTEIN – A local entrepreneur with a passion for holistic health brought her and other independent wellness providers’ skills under one roof with the opening of The Refinery Wellness Center.

After obtaining a bachelor’s degree in marketing with an emphasis in entrepreneurship, and following a stint in the promotional products industry, Owner Brooke Bateman said she did some soul-searching and decided it was time for something new.

“Everything I enjoyed doing outside of work all had to do with the health, wellness and beauty industries,” she said. “So, I thought, ‘You know what? I’m going to take a chance. I’m going to go back to school to be an esthetician.’”

Receiving “pretty much straight A’s” throughout her esthetician’s program, Bateman said the practice “came very naturally” to her. 

Following her graduation, she said she immediately sought industry experience.

“I made sure I started working at a resort spa, because I wanted to continue to gain experience and an understanding of the industry,” she said. “But, deep down, I knew I wanted to have my own place one day. I just didn’t know how I was going to get there.”

Between 2006-16, Bateman said she worked at the Aspira Spa, located within The Osthoff Resort in Elkhart Lake.

“In that time, I met my now husband, we got married, we started growing our family and it just became very difficult for me to have weekends where I would be on call where we couldn’t do anything, or I would be in the middle of making a bottle, and they would call and say, ‘Hey, you need to be at work within an hour,’” she said. 

Because “working for someone else started to become tricky,” Bateman said she began to think about opening her own business closer to home.

“We live in a very small town, maybe only a little more than 3,000 people,” she said. “I was told by a lot of people…, ‘If you’re going to start your own business, you should go to a bigger city.’”

However, Bateman said those who come from rural towns recognize that they need health-related businesses.

“If you understand the culture, and if you understand the psychology of the people who live around you, you’ll understand…,” she said. “They do not want to leave this area to have their services.”

Bateman said the relaxation benefits of wellness services like the ones offered at The Refinery – including physical therapy, massage therapy, pilates, aesthetics, functional medicine and more – can be “erased” by the lengthy drives clients have to make to and from their provider’s location.

“Everybody in this area [has a harder time] participating in these services,” she said. “So, [I decided to] build it here.”

Now, Bateman said she is excited to officially welcome customers to her new, local space for calm and relaxation located at 2011 Wisconsin Ave. in New Holstein.

Starting small

Bateman said The Refinery Wellness Center is a product of the near-decade she worked to build her business, service offerings and team.

“I became an LLC in 2017 [as Refinery Esthetics Bar],” she said. “It was a pretty slow and small start.”

Before officially launching her business, Bateman said she was working part-time with her father in his promotional products business to fund the services for her very first clients.

“I started by renting a room from a lady who was a massage therapist,” she said. “I would take $50 or $75 [of my] paycheck and buy more fan brushes, or a trial starter kit of facial products that would get me through three facials…, and it just grew from there.”

About a year into renting her initial space, Bateman said the building’s owner sold it.

“There were three of us renting there – we had 30 days to find a new space, and New Holstein doesn’t have a lot of properties available,” she said. “So, at that time, my dad said, ‘If you want to rent my conference room, [you can use it] when we’re not working.’”

Her father’s conference room, Bateman said, served as a “band-aid” solution while she worked to find a different location for her business – leading her to rent and renovate a second-floor, five-bedroom apartment in 2019.

“You could hear the office [phones] ringing in the background, and I would just turn my spa music up, but… I needed [the conference room] until that five-bedroom apartment was ready and remodeled,” she said. “It was a whole top floor above the flower shop in town.” 

Transitioning out of her job with her father between 2018-20, Bateman said she took her business full-time, unfortunately, just before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I no longer needed the extra income from my dad [because] I had enough clients built up that I [could] just be an esthetician, running my own company full-time,” she said. “Then the pandemic hit.”

Adaptation leads to growth

The uncertainty of the pandemic, Bateman said, caused her to question her decision to work for herself full-time.

But, ultimately, she said she persevered and problem-solved – opening the additional space in her new apartment to “other like-minded wellness businesses… to help offset the rental expense.”

“At the time, I want to say we had four other girls there [doing] massage, yoga and acupuncture,” she said. “We made [that] work for five years, and then last summer, I finally got the courage to put an offer in on a building.”

From there, Bateman said ideas for The Refinery Wellness Center started to take shape – which allows for the offering of the same services their clients have come to know and love, as well as new amenities.

Bateman – a board-certified licensed aesthetician, Usui Reiki Master and wellness educator per refinerywellnesscenter.com – said she and Shannon Rogers of Holistic Skin and Scalp Wellness provide the center’s aesthetic services.

The website further states Jennifer Nadler-Lont of Three Oaks Health + Wellness; Becky Kissinger of Proactive Core Health; Beth Tessmer of Moonchild Massage and Wellness; as well as certified personal trainer and nutrition coach Zoë Justinger provide, respectively, The Refinery’s functional medicine, physical therapy/pilates, massage therapy and fitness services.

Per the website, clients can also book appointments with Alexis Gilbert of Studio 1422 and Tanya Meyers of Small Town Beauty for hair and nail services.

Including herself, Bateman said two of The Refinery’s independent providers also offer eastern medicine wellness services.

The combination of different services and medical disciplines under its single roof, Bateman said, is part of the value The Refinery Wellness Center offers.

“It helps so much more to be able to give people that full spectrum [of] services,” she said.

Putting in an offer on the center’s then-future home in August 2024, Bateman said the real work began after it was accepted the following month.

Because she and all of The Refinery’s independent contractors are licensed by the state, Bateman said there were significant obstacles she had to hurdle in order to legally operate the business in its new space.

“The state is very specific in how they need things laid out,” she said. “They basically said, ‘Here’s the process, you need to hire an architect, [and] we need actual blueprints on the HVAC, the plumbing, [etc].’”

Bateman said state officials completed their final inspection of the building while she, her husband and their three children were away on vacation this past May.

“So, it was high-stress, but we were on the beach in Mexico [when] we got the news the state went through and approved everything we did, and we were officially ready to open our doors,” she said.

‘It feels like home’

At its grand opening in June, Bateman said 300 community members came to support New Holstein’s newest business.

“Our food truck vendor sold out of food,” she said. “It was just overwhelming – beautiful, amazing, supportive – [and] now that all of the chips have fallen into place and we’re there working. It feels incredible.”

Bateman said she initially struggled to find a name for her business before landing on The Refinery Esthetics Bar – later changing it to include “Wellness Center” after offering space to additional, independent wellness providers.

“I’m a Virgo, and when you look up the definition of what a Virgo does, we literally refine people, places and spaces,” she said. “The definition of the word refine or refinery [is] all about making small improvements, and when we look at that from either a health perspective or a soul-level perspective, I just feel like that’s what we’re all here to do, is every day, just get a little bit better.”

Following her instincts to refine the lives and well-being of her clients, Bateman said she started her business and never looked back – growing it into what it is today not only for herself but for her team.

“We have this gorgeous new space now, and it’s great,” she said. “It’s very calm and soothing, and all of my tenants are happy, [which] is incredibly important to me – making sure they’re happy in their space is huge.”

Above all, Bateman said she’s happy the excitement has worn off as she starts to settle into the feeling of achieving her long-term goal.

“There was so much pushing [to get] the project done and then plan a grand opening,” she said. “[But] today, I could cry – it feels like home.”

To learn more about The Refinery Wellness Center or any of its wellness providers, visit its website and social media.