Thursday Throwback: Partner in Sky Club restaurant purchases his brother’s share

This story is reprinted from the July 9, 1999, edition of the Portage County Gazette
By Gazette Staff
A partner in the Sky Club Restaurant in Plover has purchased his brother’s share of the business.
Terrol Freund is now the sole owner of the restaurant, which has been in the Freund family since 1961, after buying out his brother, Dennis. The transaction took place June 1. Dennis plans to remain at the Sky Club until Sept. 1.
Terry, as most people know him, says his two sons, Pat and Eric, have joined the business. “The boys pretty much made a commitment,” he told the Gazette.
Marion Noel opened the Sky Club in 1940, and three others operated the restaurant before John Freund of Neenah purchased it from Louis and Evelyn Schnittger in 1961.
After John Freund’s sudden death in 1965, Terry and another brother, Doug, bought and operated the restaurant. The following May, Dennis joined them.
Doug left three years later, and Terry and Dennis have run the restaurant as partners ever since – Dennis spending much of his time behind the bar, and Terry running the kitchen.
The Freunds say the Sky Club may have been the first in the world to offer an “all-you-can-eat” salad bar in the 1950s, about the same time the restaurant adopted the slogan “Heavenly Food Served by Angels.” The restaurant still features its famous salad bar today.
Dennis still plans to be active in business ventures and to continue serving on a number of boards, including the Portage County Bank, St. Michael’s Hospital Foundation, and the Community Foundation of Portage County.