Little Fat Gretchen’s wins big – named Small Biz of the Year

Rachel Kroeger

Staff

March 2, 2026

WAUPACA – Having been known and loved for its daily specials, welcoming environment and locally sourced menu, Owner Gretchen Halverson said Little Fat Gretchen’s is now also known as the 2025 Waupaca Area Chamber and Visitors Bureau’s Small Business of the Year.

Halverson – a chef with decades of food industry experience – said though it’s “wonderful” to be recognized by her community, the real honor comes from the unrelenting support Little Fat Gretchen has received since opening its doors 12 years ago at 108 S. Main St.

“It’s wonderful to know that we have the support of the community,” she said. “They’re the ones that keep us afloat in the winter.”

Though her restaurant’s early success was sustained by local patrons for “several years,” Halverson said an interview with a Wisconsin-based magazine “turned on the faucet.”

“I’d done many interviews before, and I really didn’t think much about it,” she said. “Well, it ran in the month of May, [and on] Memorial weekend… we were not prepared.”

After that weekend, Halverson said it wasn’t unusual for Little Fat Gretchen’s to have “a line of people at the door” – forcing her and her team to adapt their processes to its newfound popularity.

“Now, we have a pretty good system,” she said. “We have little table tents… [and] when we’re really busy, we limit your time for an hour, because there are people who come here from an hour away and they’re waiting half an hour to eat.”

At its peak this past summer, Halverson said there were often between “25-35 people waiting outside just to come in and eat” at Little Fat Gretchen’s.

“That, to me, is flabbergasting, because I don’t know if I would do that,” she laughed. “If I were hungry, would I really want to wait half an hour to be seated and then another half an hour to get my food? That’s a huge compliment to me [and] makes me so incredibly proud of the people we have working here.”

Following its annual banquet, Halverson said the Waupaca Chamber’s CEO/president, Jeff Anderson, came and presented her with Little Fat Gretchen’s Small Business of the Year award.

No one from the restaurant had attended the event, she said, because they had other commitments and weren’t aware of their nomination.

“Because all of the people that would go to the banquet get up at 2 a.m. and go to bed at like 6 p.m., none of us chose to go,” she said. “A couple people who actually were at the banquet messaged my oldest daughter and myself, late when we were both sleeping, that we had won.”

Local ‘since day one’

Born and raised in Waupaca, Halverson said she began her culinary career as a young teenager.

“My first job was working at Dairy Queen when I was 14,” she said. “I’ve always been in the food industry one way or another.”

While cooking for residents at the retirement facility her mother owned and operated, Halverson said she and her mother’s business partner encouraged her to pursue some kind of professional culinary certification.

“I was there about a year [when] she and her business partner had suggested I go to culinary arts school,” she said. “They helped pay for me to go to Fox Valley Technical College (FVTC) in Appleton.”

Though she didn’t complete the program – “I really couldn’t… work and go to school at the same time because I had two small children” – Halverson said she retained much of what she learned at FVTC and carried those lessons with her after deciding to open her own restaurant.

“I was working at the Crystal Cafe in Iowa [at the time],” she said. “I loved that job, [and] I really did not want to leave there, so I put in about a two-month notice [just] in case [Little Fat Gretchen’s] didn’t work out.”

Still operating out of its first and only location, Halverson said though the building was already “set up for a cafe” when she leased it, because it hadn’t been open in a long time, it required significant renovations.

“We put in new flooring, a counter with chairs and we had to get all new furnishings,” she said. “We redid the kitchen – I got a bigger grill and hood. It took a good two months to get it ready for us to open.”

Though she was taking over a former cafe, Halverson said her original goal had been to own a bakery rather than a restaurant.

“I just wanted to do a bakery, [but] I knew that probably wouldn’t generate enough cash flow,” she said. “I needed to have some income, and my mother said, ‘Why don’t we just do a whole cafe?’”

Following her mother’s advice once again, Halverson said she began putting together a menu.

“It was very spontaneous,” she said. “We’re kind of known for our daily specials, and since COVID-19, we have actually been posting them every day on Facebook and Instagram so people can make a plan of what they want [to eat] for the day.”

Outside of its daily specials, Halverson said Little Fat Gretchen’s menu hasn’t changed.

“Our printed menu that people see every day is the same stuff that we’ve been getting since day one,” she said. “The local people I get produce from, I’ve [used] them for a long time now, and everything is wonderful. [The] food distributors I [order] from are also wonderful…, [but] we try to emphasize the locally and organically grown things we get from some people in the area.”

Rewriting memories

Halverson said Little Fat Gretchen’s is technically named after the 1940s children’s book – but more importantly, its namesake is her “story about the book, not the story in the book.”

“The book was on the shelf in my kindergarten class, and I was an overweight child, so one of the little boys took the book and ran around the classroom saying, ‘Oh, little fat Gretchen, little fat Gretchen!’” she said. “It was horrifying, so the teacher had taken the book off the shelf, and at the end of the school year, she gave it to me so it wouldn’t ever happen again.”

Coincidentally, Halverson said her restaurant happens to neighbor The Bookcellar – a bookstore owned and operated by her landlord.

“My landlord has just been the best – I couldn’t ask for a [more] wonderful person,” she said. “It’s purely a coincidence that he runs a bookstore, and the name of Little Fat Gretchen’s comes from the title of a book. So, it all kind of looked like it was meant to be.”

Though Little Fat Gretchen’s name originated from a negative memory, Halverson said it was her mother who encouraged her to reframe it positively.

“My mom is actually the one who came up with it, and I’m like, ‘Mom, I really don’t want to do that,’ because it wasn’t such a great memory,” she said. “[But] she said, ‘Well, I named you an interesting name, this book is interesting and the story behind it is interesting, so we should just do it.’”

Despite her initial apprehension, Halverson said Little Fat Gretchen’s has helped her reframe her own memory of the name – as well as for other Gretchens as well.

“I grew up maybe knowing one Gretchen, and through the years, I bet I’ve met about 100, and most of them kind of had the same story as me – that they were bullied in some way or another when they were children,” she said. “They all want to see what Little Fat Gretchen’s was about…, [and] now they come back all the time.”

Halverson said her staff of 14 and their “creative specials” have a habit of establishing regular customers.

“We’ve got the best customers who are here almost every single day – some are here every single day… [because] I’ve got a really good team of people who come up with the specials,” she said. “Everything is so delicious. I’m so fortunate.”

Overwhelming support

Halverson said her mother – Patricia Vaux, who passed away in 2021 – was a major influence both on her culinary career and in the creation of Little Fat Gretchen’s.

“I have to say, if it wasn’t for her, I don’t think I ever would have done any of this,” she said. “I miss her so incredibly much.”

Prior to her passing, Halverson said Vaux spearheaded an initiative at Little Fat Gretchen’s to display and sell local artwork.

“We have local artists’ [work] hanging here that can be purchased throughout the year,” she said. “People love that – the stuff just flies off the walls here, especially in the summertime and at Christmas.”

In honor of Vaux, Halverson said Little Fat Gretchen’s scholarship – awarded annually to a local student – was renamed after her.

“It’s great because I get to meet these kids,” she said. “They send me a letter, they come in and thank us, and it’s great to see these young people wanting to work.”

Year over year, Halverson said Little Fat Gretchen’s continues to “get a little busier” – gaining attention and support from locals, tourists and now, the Waupaca chamber.

“Waupaca is a great town,” she said. “We have such a great following from the locals who live here, [and] in the summertime, the tourists are just amazing – we get overwhelmed… This community is so supportive.”

For Little Fat Gretchen’s hours, menu and daily special, visit its Facebook or Instagram pages.