The managers of Bud's Pizza are delivering back to downtown Portage a familiar menu item - the Portage Cafe.

Kevin Kasten and Tricia Mumm, who run Bud's Pizza (1505 New Pinery Road in Portage) and Bud's Express (formerly the Lunch Box in Pardeeville) for owner Jerry Spears are leasing the Portage Cafe (111 W. Cook St. in Portage) with the intention of opening it next month.

The exact opening day for the restaurant, whose former owners closed it in April 2007, is up in the air.

"I'd like to say September 1, but staffing is the main issue," Mumm said.

"I'd like to say tomorrow," Kasten added.

Spears bought the restaurant from Bank of Wisconsin Dells after the building was acquired by the bank from John and Kelly Regalia. The Regalias closed the restaurant last year after Kelly Regalia's health problems spurred financial problems. She died this past July.

The Regalias extensively remodeled Portage Cafe, placing a few decorative rooster knickknacks on the walls that prompted regular customers to add their own. Some of the rooster decorations still sit on the walls of the restaurant.

To start, Kasten and Mumm plan to keep the restaurant close to its original recipe, including the rooster decorations and its former cook, Steve Copeland, who works for the two at Bud's Pizza.

The restaurant will have early daytime hours, 6 a.m. to 2 p.m., seven days a week (6 a.m. to noon Sundays) and will feature breakfast items available all hours it's open.

When Spears acquired the restaurant from the bank - the deal went through Wednesday - he approached Kasten and Mumm about leasing it from him. It will be the first restaurant business they have owned.

"She was extremely nervous about going into it," said Kasten, whose father, Gary, owns the Spinning Wheels Skate Center in Portage. "It's just going to mean less sleep."

"It was completely different from my plan coming out here," Mumm said. "There was a little hesitation, but we jumped right in."

Mumm moved to Portage from California two years ago to help out her aunt, Chris Pieper, a secretary at the Portage Police Department who underwent chemotherapy treatment for stage 4 cancer.

Mumm, who helped manage a restaurant on the West Coast, started working at Bud's not long after moving to Portage and started a few days after the restaurant opened.

Kasten, who helped prepare the Bud's building before it opened, came on July 2007 to help Mumm manage Bud's Pizza. The two took on Bud's Express this past June.

In getting Portage Cafe ready, the two have a few tasks to do before it can open. The bank cleaned the building after acquiring it and prepped it for its closure, but some equipment and seating was left behind.

"It's just a matter of cleaning dust, getting inventory, staffing," Kasten said.

The two hope to tweak the decor in the coming months, including putting up historic photos of Portage. The menu - which is being printed soon - will resemble what it did under the Regalias, much like other aspects of the new Portage Cafe.

"It's going to be pretty close to what it was before," Mumm said.

 

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