GREEN BAY, Wis. (NBC26) -- Traditional igloos usually stay in tact as the temperature drops below freezing.
But for the ones Hinterland Brewery assistant manager Emily Legener helped build, when winter weather hits, it makes things a lot worse.
"We envision it [dining igloos] as this really lovely dining experience," Legener said. "We want to maintain that. We don’t want to provide something that’s subpar by any means."
A handful of restaurants in Northeast Wisconsin built plastic igloos for people to dine outdoors during the winter. But for Legener and Hinterland, the domes haven’t been easy to manage.
"We had a different igloo that the plastic structure was a little bit more brittle," Legener said. "So when it gets cold, there’s tearing issues and things like that. So that’s been a little bit of learning curve as well and how to secure them to the ground and make sure… because it’s super, super windy through that Titletown area. It just whips right through."
One of Hinterland’s three domes was pushed aside by harsh winter wind.
"It [the igloo] was catching inside rather than expelling itself and flowing through," Legener said. "So it [wind] kind of lifted it up a little bit and moved over all the furniture."
But Legener says some weather conditions pose a problem to even the soundest and safest structures.
"The wind was blowing our propane heaters over, like that’s how strong it was," Legener said. "There’s a full propane tank at the base of this heater, and we had four of them knock over. That’s how windy it was."
And with domes that hold up to eight people, managing the temperature hasn’t been an easy feat for Legener either.
"Figuring out how to mitigate those circumstances has been a little bit of a challenge," she said. "Like, okay, how much do we have to let fresh air in with the heater, with this many bodies? And I don’t think any of us have majors in thermodynamics."
Despite the learning curve Hinterland has faced with the igloos, guests say they haven’t noticed any issues yet.
"They’re dependent upon, places, people like us coming in," Maureen Burke-Medvedyev, who visited from San Diego, said. "And something like this makes it possible."
"[We get to] have a restaurant meal out at a restaurant without fear of Covid implications," Green Bay resident Sheila Burke said. "It’s super cool."
