Five months after leaving the 3rd St. Market Hall, a popular burger-and-custard restaurant is coming back in a new location.
Dairyland Old-Fashioned Hamburgers will be setting up shop inside St. Francis bar Redbar, 2245 S. St. Francis Ave., with plans to open in early or mid-December.
Dairyland owners Kurt Fogle, Katie Fogle and Joe McCormick said they’re looking forward to their new relationship with the neighborhood bar.
“We’re neighborhood people, so we feel like what we do works really well in this kind of environment,” Kurt Fogle said. “Between what they do on the bar side and what we do on the food side, we have a lot of the same ideologies about taking care of people. It really represents the best part of Wisconsin to us.”
Dairyland is bringing back fan-favorite burgers, fried chicken, cheese curds and a Friday fish fry
Guests can expect all the greatest hits from Dairyland’s original menu, including its lineup of seven different seared, smash-style cheeseburgers and hamburgers served on house-made buns, including its Big-Mac-style “Big Man On Campus,” which the Journal Sentinel called one of Milwaukee’s best burgers in 2024.
The restaurant also will serve a patty melt, hand-breaded fried chicken sandwiches, chicken tenders, french fries, house-battered cheese curds and thick-cut onion rings. It will bring back its house-made sauces, too, like its buttermilk ranch, tangy secret sauce and cheese sauce.
On Fridays, Dairyland will offer a Wisconsin fish fry special, with fried Alaskan cod served with tartar sauce, french fries and buttermilk coleslaw.
“Moving into a bar on the south side, I think a fish fry is a really important element,” Fogle said. “It doesn’t have a lot of bells and whistles, but we just tried to make one that symbolizes the perfect Wisconsin fish fry.”
Dairyland’s fan-favorite hot eats will be back at Redbar, but it won’t be carrying its popular frozen custard. But guests hankering for something sweet on the side may be treated to Dairyland’s house-baked cookies and brownies in the future.
“We wouldn’t dream of denying the people of St. Francis these treats,” Fogle said.
While logistics are still being worked out, the Dairyland team said guests should be able to put in their orders with front-of-house staff, who will deliver food to their tables once it’s ready.
“Dairyland is not taking over Redbar, and Redbar is not becoming a restaurant,” Fogle said. “It will still be a bar that serves high-quality Wisconsin favorites.”
That said, it’s still a bar. So while the space and food are kid-friendly, parents should plan accordingly when planning to dine in with kids.
Dairyland plans to be open from 2 to 10 p.m. daily, with the potential to extend its hours in the future. It will also offer carryout.
The long road to Redbar
Dairyland opened in 2020 as a takeout restaurant during the pandemic, operating out of shared kitchen Common Cookhouse in Oak Creek. It also operated a food truck at Zócalo Food Park on Milwaukee’s south side and served food inside Central Waters Brewing Co.’s Milwaukee taproom.
The restaurant, along with its sister concept Mid-Way Bakery, were the first two vendors that signed with 3rd St. Market Hall when it opened in 2022. In June 2025, both vendors announced they would be leaving the food hall after more than three years.
Of their exit from the market hall, the Dairyland team said that, after rent structure renegotiations, a clause in their contract stated that if the market could find another vendor who could cover the original rental deal, Dairyland would be given a 60-day notice to vacate their vendor stall.
Bebe Zito, a Minnesota-based burger-and-ice-cream restaurant, opened in the former Dairyland space in August.
“At the end of the day, it was a business casualty,” McCormick said. “They got their numbers and have a business to run, so that’s the way it works.”
But with lessons learned, Dairyland looks forward to its new future at Redbar.
“I think there’s something we’ll have at Redbar that we’ve never really had before,” Katie Fogle said. “It’s a genuine, welcoming atmosphere. The people there really want to be there.”
They look forward to serving food to folks coming in to watch Packers games, sitting down with a fish fry or eating before catching Redbar’s shuttle to Brewers games.
At Redbar, Dairyland will replace barbecue joint the Saucy Swine, which had operated inside the bar for more than eight years. The Saucy Swine closed in early November, with owner Matt Nuetzel telling the Journal Sentinel he was stepping back to spend more time with family.
When a friend mentioned they’d heard Redbar would be losing its food vendor, McCormick said they called the owners, Carrie Wisniewski and Nick Schell, right away. On Nov. 14, about a month after that call, both Redbar and Dairyland teased their new partnership on social media.
“We’ve never had this kind of response for anything, ever,” Kurt Fogle said of the response to the social-media teaser. “It seems like people have come out of the woodwork to celebrate the fact that we’re not done.”
For updates on Dairyland’s progress, follow Dairyland at facebook.com/ilovedairylandand on Instagram at instagram.com/ilovedairyland; and follow Redbar at facebook.com/redbarMKE and on Instagram at instagram.com/redbarmke.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Popular burger restaurant Dairyland is coming back, opening in St. Francis
Reporting by Rachel Bernhard, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
