The co-owner of Culver’s Restaurant in Platteville was honored by the Wisconsin Restaurant Association recently.

Bruce Kroll was the Wisconsin nominee for the National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation’s Restaurant Neighbor Award in the Cornerstone Humanitarian category.

Kroll was honored for his paying his employees’ salaries after salary insurance ran out 60 days after the November 2013 fire that destroyed the Platteville Culver’s. Kroll considers his employees family and making sure they would be taken care of during that period of rebuilding was a priority. Kroll decided to pay his Platteville employees’ salaries for the four months beyond what insurance would cover out of his own pocket — approximately $144,000.

He also owns a successful Culver’s location in Dubuque, Iowa and was able to use those profits to assist the Platteville team. Kroll only asked his employees to volunteer their time to help out in the community. Employees often wore their Culver’s uniforms while volunteering and identified areas of need in the Platteville area. This resulted in several successful employee-led fundraisers, including one for the Platteville Fire Department, which fought the Culver’s fire.

Kroll had operated the Platteville location for 19 years and was committed to keeping his “Culver’s family” together.” In an interview for with WISC-TV in Madison he said, “It is just a building, and Culver’s of Platteville is much more than that. It is the people and not the building.”