Wisconsin Life

Prairie du Chien's downtown looks nearly unchanged from a century ago. And one downtown business really hasn't changed at all. When we hit our 100th year, I didn't realize how many businesses never even get close to that. Paul Gokey is the third generation operating Pete's Hamburgers. Pete's started in 1909. Peter was my grandfather. It was left to my father. I mean I grew up on eating hamburgers. Paul wasn't the only one. He grew up with seven siblings. There's three sets of twins. I think the earliest memory for each of us was, you didn't get to come down here and work, until after you peeled onions for a couple of years. That was a rite of passage for every one of us. Those onions are the first secret of success for Pete's Hamburgers. Their scent wafts over downtown. Oh, that smells so good. That's good advertising too. I'll try not to eat them in the car this time.

laughs

And there are only two ways to have a Pete's Hamburger. I will take one. Onions? With, please. With onion or without.

cash register ringing

Do you want onions on those? - Yep. If you really need to have it your way, you'd better come prepared. We've had people bring mushrooms down, morel mushrooms, that type of thing, just throw 'em on their burger for them, when they're ready to eat. I'll take it. Hell, I'll eat no matter how. But Pete's keeps it simple. I think just the simplicity of it, it seems to go over. The second ingredient of Pete's success couldn't be any more simple. Water. Ninety percent lean meat that we use. It started when Pete had a lot of unsold burgers he wanted to keep over until the next rush of business. To keep 'em fresh, he started adding water to 'em.

The secret is

it gets better with each pan because it makes its own broth. So each pan tastes better than the first. At the end of the night, a lot of times, people want to come and just take a jar of the juice home. There is people that still believe it's something else besides water. And it isn't.

cash register ringing

The secret is

It's a simple formula for success that's made a big difference for the Gokey family. This business paid for, all eight of us went to college. And a new generation of Gokeys is considering getting into the hamburger business. Sharing the hope that, like a Pete's Hamburger, life just keeps getting better.