When Cobblestone Hotels opened its first property — in Clintonville, Wisconsin, in 2008 — its decidedly contrarian lodging strategy focused on rural and small communities. The concept proved prescient. Today the Neenah, Wisconsin-based hotelier has 169 hotels open or under construction across 28 states. Cobblestone caters to a range of travelers with various brands, including its upper economy-minded Centerstone model and its new Riverstone Suites extended-stay option.

The company is applying a similar small-market approach to food-and-beverage with Wissota Chophouse. Cobblestone owns about 30 of its properties and the rest are franchised, said Cobblestone Hotels president of development Jeremy Griesbach. Cobblestone holds minority stakes in 70 of those. The high-end steakhouse is an option for its upscale Cobblestone Hotel & Suites Main Street offering, he said. As the Main Street moniker suggests, the hotels and restaurant are frequently located in or near a downtown.

The first Wissota Chophouse opened eight years ago in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, the hometown of Cobblestone Hotels late founder Brian Wogernese. At the time, he and his wife saw an opportunity to develop a vacant downtown parcel. The resulting upscale hotel and dining combination became the company’s flagship property, The Chippewa Herald quoted Wogernese as saying in 2016. From there, demand for the restaurant took off, Griesbach said.

“Small towns are very prideful,” he observed. “When people see another town get something like a Wissota Chophouse, they begin to call and ask if we can put one in their town, too.”

Eleven Wissota Chophouses now operate in Wisconsin, Arizona, Washington, Iowa and Alabama. In October, the company opened an 86-key Cobblestone Hotel & Suites and Wissota Chophouse in Wickenburg, Arizona, a community of 8,000 about an hour’s drive northwest of downtown Phoenix and a 68-key one in Lynden, Washington, a border town of 17,000 roughly 15 miles north of Bellingham.

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Cobblestone plans to open a Wissota Chophouse in Waukesha, Wisconsin, in 2026 as part of a 60-unit hotel that is replacing a shuttered Associated Bank branch. The company doesn’t develop standalone restaurants, Griesbach said, and it prefers to locate the chophouses in trade areas in which 100,000 people live within 20 miles.

Griesbach discussed the Wissota Chophouse concept and how it fits into the hotelier’s growth plans.

When Cobblestone Hotels first launched Wissota Chophouse, was it seen as a hotel amenity or a community amenity?

We thought that it would be a great amenity for the hotel and that about 70 to 80% of our business would come from people staying there, but the opposite happened; lot of business came from the community. People who live in those towns don’t want to drive a half an hour to go to a nice place.

To what do you credit your success in small towns?

A lot of big hotel brands don’t see the opportunity for upscale lodging in smaller communities. They have to build 100 to 150 rooms, whereas we can come in with 50 or 60. Our Wissota Chophouse concept followed the same line of thinking. It may not make a lot of economic sense to build a standalone, high-end restaurant in these communities, but when you make it a little smaller and can share in the expenses and overhead with a hotel, then you can offer a nice dining experience. We can seat about 40 people at a time, and we’ve got high-end bars with great wine collections and several microbrew beers on tap.

What’s the best-kept secret about a focus on smaller communities?

There is a ton of business going on in small-town America, and many people don’t understand that. We have a hotel and steakhouse in Hartford, Wisconsin, which is a town of 17,000 but there is a manufacturing plant and 20,000 manufacturing jobs there and right down the road is Erin Hills, which has hosted a U.S. Open [golf championship] and other big tournaments. But every market is different and every market’s demand drivers are different. An area like Wickenburg is almost all tourism.

Does Cobblestone Hotels see itself as a catalyst in rejuvenation of smaller communities?

We need to see a lot of demand drivers before we’re willing to deliver a hotel in a certain community. Oftentimes, retail is already there and we’ll come in and add to that and grow along with the town.

What are your expansion plans?

We’re focused on growing in markets that we’re in, but we’re always looking for new markets and new states. We’re starting to build our next Main Street hotel and Wissota Chophouse in Waukesha, and we’re looking at about five other possible locations. While we’ve had a lot of success, we’ve also had the same challenges that restaurants in bigger communities have with the increase in costs. By far the biggest challenge is staffing, which is affecting us on both the restaurant and hotel side.