Dave's Vacation Plans

Hidden away in pole barns somewhere near Hayward, Wisconsin, are two full-scale restaurant prototypes, complete with tables, place settings, and functioning kitchen equipment. The restaurants already have names: D. W. Anderson’s Old Fashioned Eatery and Ice Cream Parlor, and the Crazy Toucan Margarita Grill. They also represent the beginnings of a comeback for a famous Twin Cities restaurateur. After several years of government and philanthropic work, Dave Anderson is preparing his return to the hospitality business.

"Typically when building a hotel, a lot of emphasis gets put on the resort, and restaurants are cobbled on later," Anderson says. "We're starting out with a fully developed vision, where every amenity was mandated by our team to be fully thought out with its own business plan."

Best known for founding the Famous Dave’s barbecue chain (he also had a hand in starting the Rainforest Café restaurants), Anderson is once again firing up his entrepreneurial kitchen and cooking up something big. Though he has been working on his new restaurant concepts for the past decade, about four years ago he caught sight of a trend that would take them even further.

“People were saying, ‘Have you seen what’s going on in the Dells?’” Anderson recalls. “There was this emerging industry taking place.”

That industry was waterparks. As anyone who has driven between the Twin Cities and Chicago knows, these massive parks with their elaborately twisting tubular slides have sprung up like weeds near I-94, and not just in and around Wisconsin Dells. Typically, these waterparks have hotel facilities attached, or at least nearby. In 2000, there were only 18 indoor waterparks in the country—today, Anderson says, there are 206, with more on the way. According to Hotel Waterpark Resorts Construction Report 2006, published by the Virginia-based International Society of Hospitality Consultants, waterpark hotels achieve higher revenue per room and higher occupancy rates than comparable hotels without waterparks.