Restaurant Owner Continues To Pay Workers Out of Pocket During 6-Month Rebuild After Fire Destroyed Establishment

For some entrepreneurs, earning a profit isn’t the only important aspect of business. There are actually some business owners who genuinely care about the people they employ. Bruce Kroll, owner of Culver’s Restaurant in Platteville, Wisconsin, is definitely one of those special people.

According to The Huffington Post, Kroll suffered a setback in November of 2013 when one of his establishments was destroyed by a fire. Although he had insurance to cover the damages and other losses associated with the massive fire, he was still faced with a problem where his employees were concerned. The restaurant’s renovation would take six months to complete and the insurance was only willing to pay his 40 employees for sixty days.

So, his staff would be without an income for approximately four months until the restaurant could re-open. Instead of just breaking the disheartening news to his employees, he decided to take matters into his own hands. Kroll opted to pay his staff out of pocket for the four months they would be out of work. The staggering amount came to a total of approximately $144,000. One of Kroll’s employees, Cole Cooper, told Channel 3000 exactly what the owner’s act of kindness meant to him personally.

“What the owner could have done is he could have said, ‘Hey, you can find another place of employment.’ He actually paid us out of his own pocket until the store was rebuilt. That’s why I love working here. I’m probably going to be here another five years just because of the owner.”

Kroll, who’s owned he restaurant for more than 19 years, also opened up about why he had no reservations about paying his dedicated employees.

“It is just a building and Culver’s of Platteville is much more than that. It is the people and not the building and we didn’t lose the people and so why should we allow the fire to cause that to happen?”

On June 16, 2014, exactly six months to the day of the fire, the restaurant reopened.

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