Improvements are in the works for 2024

By Robert Williams

Editor

After completing a panel interview with Mayor Mark Flemmer, councilman Mark Kemper, city administrator Stephanie Poegel and former Third Crossing Bar & Grill manager Tanya Mastin, Amanda Young was named the new manager of Frazee’s municipal bar and liquor store.

Young began her duties on Wednesday, Nov. 1, and took over with the help of Mastin, who stayed on to go through the basic staples of training.

“It was nice that Tanya stayed and showed me everything so I didn’t have to learn it on my own,” said Young.

Young grew up in Detroit Lakes, graduating high school there in 2012, and then relocated to Fargo to pursue a business and marketing degree at North Dakota State University

“I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it,” she said.

A lifelong bar employee, Young used her college education to try something outside the field working at Border States Electric in Fargo for two years, before moving back to the lakes area. During that time, she continued to tend bar on the weekends.

“I’ve worked at the bar since I was 15,” she said. “Even when I was working full-time I would come back on the weekends and work all weekend too; it was fun and I liked it.”

Young was a go-getter from an early age, working at two popular night spots in DL until she was old enough to step behind the bar.

“I’d work at Zorbaz from 8 in the morning to 4 o’clock at night and sometimes I would take a little nap in the parking lot and go to work at Lakeside at 5,” she said. “I’ve always had a hard work ethic and I liked making my own money. As soon as I was 18, I started bartending.”

That work ethic put her through college on a path to leave without any debt.

“Being a bartender put me through school without any student loans,” said Young.

For the past decade, Young worked at Pit 611 in rural Audubon and was managing the bar the last four years. Young turned down a counteroffer to stay in her current position and make the move to Frazee.

“The Pit offered me more money to stay; they didn’t want me to leave,” she said. “I worked really heavy on the weekends and nights over there and worked a lot of overtime on a salary.”

The change of pace and hours were an attractive part of the Third Crossing package, as Young has a three-year old daughter at home and a marriage coming up next fall. Young was searching for more flexibility with her schedule and wanted to be at home more.

Despite not having been to a job interview in a long time, Young said she “pried a little bit to see what’s going on,” during her time in front of the hiring panel. She felt like she got an honest depiction of the situation.

What was accentuated to her was an improvement in profitability.

“Mostly to make money, this place has kind of been struggling and I think COVID had a lot to do with that,” Young said. “Selling more in the on-sale and seeing if it can be profitable and I think it can be.”

Young stressed the need for events to help pack the bar and has seen some early progress.

“We had karaoke last Saturday and it was standing room only; it was packed in here; it was great and one of our best days of the year,” she said. “If the karaoke hype keeps up I’ll keep doing it. We did a wreath-making event here and that was cool, nice and busy. I think events and stuff like that will help. Being municipal, I can’t do things like two-for-ones, but we can do events.”

One early change was to on-site gambling, which now includes the always popular meat raffles and horse races. Young also has potential plans like bingo and trivia in the back of her mind.

While Third Crossing is currently offering similar fryer food options and pizzas, Young is pondering expanding into more homestyle lunch specials, noting the lack of food options in town. Increasing the hours of operation is also on the table, but after beginning her tenure in November, she is using the final two months of the year to assess the business and looks to make any significant changes in the coming year at a controlled pace.

“I just want to get through the rest of the year and look at that on January 1,” she said. “I think it could be profitable if we stay open until 10.”

Profitability is a big part of running a municipal liquor outlet and Frazee has been behind area towns in being able to distribute money from liquor operations to the city.

In August, the city council heard comments on the topic from Colleen Hoffman, managing partner at Hoffman, Philipp, & Knutson accounting firm in Thief River Falls, after completing the city audit.

“Their fund balance is a little bit low for what their annual spending is, so we’re looking at building up their balance just a little bit,” Hoffman said. “If they need anything major, such as repairs, we’re not going to have any money there.”

There are some structural repairs needed at both the liquor store and event center, mainly on the roof.

As recently as September of 2022, the city council had serious discussions about the viability of continuing to run the bar and store.

Young is looking forward to finding what changes will work for the future and hopefully, seeing the profits come along with those changes.

“We’ll have to spend some money on marketing and that kind of stuff to make sure people know we’re open,” she said. “I don’t know if we’ll start with going until 10 p.m. right away. It seems like, when we have stayed open later, there have been a few on and off days in the last month where 9 is the golden number. Everyone just kind of files out at 9 anyway.”

Finding the balance between both sides of the house is a personal goal of Young’s.

“I’d really like to change this place around and have it be busier,” she said. “Some people feel like the off-sale supports the on-sale and whatnot. The way I look at it, you have one person here no matter what. I don’t think it hurts to have the bar open. I’d like to see the on-sale start to do as much as the off-sale. Hopefully, we can change things around a bit and make some more money for the city.”