BUCKLEY — Cindy and Ron Thielmann expect to see a lot of familiar faces when they open the doors to their new cafe in Buckley next week.
There might even be a crowd.
Cindy’s Roadside Cafe is set to open Monday, Feb. 17, at 310 S. Railroad Ave., several blocks south from where the rural Danforth couple once owned and operated the popular Buckley Market & Deli on the village’s north edge. It is also not too far from Roberts, a village in neighboring Ford County whose residents might remember the Thielmanns from their 13 years of running the Happy Days Diner in their town until about three years ago.
“Everybody is very excited,” said Cindy Thielmann, whose career as a restaurant owner began in 2002 when she and her husband opened Clifton Deli & Catering in the village of Clifton, moving to Iroquois County from the Chicago area where they had worked as a deli manager and meat cutter, respectively. “Even people from Roberts (are excited), and I’ve had people from Clifton get ahold of me saying, ‘We’re going to have to take the ride (to Buckley) and come up and see you.’ So, we’ve had a very, very good response, all the way around.”
Ron and Cindy Thielmann pose Monday, Feb. 10, at their new cafe in Buckley.
Cindy Thielmann said she and her husband are excited, too.
“From the beginning until now, it’s always been an awesome experience (to operate a restaurant in this area),” she said, “so we’re excited to see everybody again.”
The long-anticipated opening of the Buckley cafe comes almost exactly 65 years to the day that the Chris’tle Motel & Restaurant held its grand opening at the location on U.S. 45, just after the restaurant/motel building was built. Since that January 1960 date, the front portion of the building has always been used as a restaurant with the back area used as either a motel or apartments. Most recently, the restaurant area was the home of Wildfire Pizza & Grill, whose owner has been looking for another location in Ford County following its closure last year.
The Thielmanns decided to make the return to restaurant ownership after learning that the building’s current owners, Jordan and Dalton Weber, were seeking a tenant to rent its front portion for use as a restaurant. The Thielmanns — Ron, 77, and Cindy, 72 — had been trying to enjoy their retirement but kept finding themselves wanting to be more active, so the idea of renting space for another restaurant was appealing, especially with not having to buy another building at their ages to do so.
“It was just the perfect fit,” Cindy Thielmann said.
The couple hope to operate the cafe for years to come.
“As I’m told, we’re a young 72 and 77,” she said. “So, I have no issue at all with thinking I’ve got years to go still in me.”
Both will staff the cafe, with Ron Thielmann slicing meat and his wife cooking, along with some part-time wait staff. It will be nothing new to the couple, who also were hands-on owners at their previous food establishments in Buckley, Roberts and Clifton.
“We’re ready to go again,” Cindy Thielmann said.
The cafe, with a seating capacity of about 50, will be open from 6 a.m. to 1 p.m. Monday through Friday and offer breakfast and lunch. Cindy Thielmann said she originally hoped to also possibly offer weekend hours, but she said she expects to be too busy with the catering side of the business on those days. Catering is available for functions large and small within a 25- to 30-mile radius of Buckley, she said.
“Since the word’s got out (that the cafe is opening), I have so many catering jobs (booked) that my weekends will be for catering (only),” she said.
All of the cafe’s food will be “homemade,” ranging from hamburgers, chicken tenders, crispy chicken sandwiches, sub sandwiches, soups, salads and pork tenderloin patties for lunch to eggs, pancakes, waffles, omelets, toast and biscuits and gravy for breakfast, Cindy Thielmann said. A variety of lunch meats will be available for purchase by the pound, as well, she noted. There will also be desserts.
In addition to the cafe’s regular menu, there will be daily specials, as listed on a board inside the restaurant.
“On that board, there will always be a meal — be it meatloaf or be it fried chicken,” Cindy Thielmann said. “There will always be some kind of meal every day.”
At some point, the new cafe is expected to begin hosting Peace Meal program meals for senior citizens, just as the Happy Days Diner did in Roberts prior to its closure by the then-retiring Thielmanns in June 2022.
“We just have to get it off and going,” Cindy Thielmann said, noting that she recently received word that the Peace Meal program operated by OSF Healthcare is returning to the area after a hiatus and is seeking host sites. “I’m waiting on a call back from them, but hopefully we will do Peace Meal here again. … It was a very good thing (in the past). In Roberts, we did dine-in (meals), and we delivered (meals). I don’t know if that’s still an option where we can deliver to people in Buckley who can’t get out. I don’t know yet, because no one’s gotten back, but if that’s the case I’m sure we will deliver carryouts to seniors who don’t drive and can’t get out.”
The Thielmanns planned to enjoy retirement when they closed Happy Days Diner and sold the building three years ago, but by late summer 2022, Cindy Thielmann was already back to work part-time at Reichert Spice Co. in Ashkum, while her husband was getting restless at home.
“He said, ‘You know, I’ve got to do something,’” Cindy Thielmann recalled.
After a while, Cindy Thielmann was beginning to receive an increasing number of catering requests — which she would fulfill by obtaining one-day food permits from the local health department and then preparing meals in a commercial kitchen at the Roberts Gym in Roberts.
So, when the opportunity arose to get back into restaurant ownership, the couple decided it might be best for both of them.
“It’s like one of our farm women (customers) said: ‘It’s just like farming: It’s in your blood; you’ve got to do it,’” Cindy Thielmann said. “So I said, ‘Let’s do it again. So we’re old. Let’s do it again. My dreams aren’t done yet. I’m continuing on.’”
The Thielmanns, both Chicago-area transplants who celebrate 25 years of marriage in September, have lived in rural Danforth since 2004. In 2001, they began looking for a restaurant building to buy, eventually settling on a shuttered restaurant building in Clifton that they would turn into Clifton Deli & Catering the next year. The lower purchase cost of real estate in Iroquois County compared with the suburbs prompted the couple to look downstate.
After selling their home in Chicago Heights, they initially moved to Clifton before moving to rural Danforth in 2004, the same year that they sold the Clifton business and opened the Buckley Market & Deli. After closing the Buckley Market & Deli in 2007, they returned to their regular jobs as a meat cutter and deli manager at Chicagoland establishments. Eventually, in 2009, Keith and Laurie Lauge, then the owners of the Happy Days Diner, asked if the couple, who were commuting an hour and a half each way to work and back every day, would be interested in buying the Roberts diner, which was much closer to their home. The Thielmanns agreed.
“We decided, ‘Let’s do it, because we can work for somebody else and do this, or we can work for ourselves and do the same thing and it’s ours,’” Cindy Thielmann said. “It just fell into place. It was like 18 minutes from home. It just all fit.”
Ron Thielmann has been a meat cutter by trade for most of his adult life, working as a meat department manager at grocery stores except for a brief stint as a bread delivery driver. Cindy Thielmann, meanwhile, has worked in the deli at grocery stores for the duration of her career when not managing restaurants and delis that she herself owns.
“We’ve always worked in food service,” she said. “That’s what we’ve always done.”
Fittingly, they met while working together at a grocery store.
“Probably 50 years ago, we met in a grocery store where he was a meat cutter and I worked in the deli,” Cindy Thielmann said. “He (later) went one way and was married, and I ended up going another way and got married — and 30 years later we bumped into each other. … It was history from there.”
The couple — who each have one adult child from their prior marriages — were married in September 2000 and have been literally inseparable ever since.
They would have it no other way, too.
“It’s not to say that there aren’t arguments here at work, because we’ve always both been bosses, but when we leave work, work stays here,” Cindy Thielmann said. “When we leave, we leave, and work just stays here. That’s always how it’s been, and it works out pretty good.”
More information about Cindy’s Roadside Cafe, including the telephone number to place catering or carryout orders, is available on its Facebook page.