By now, most of Lakeville has heard some version of the story. There's a gas station on 210th Street West where a shelf of soda cans swings open into a Prohibition-style bar with a copper bathtub and no televisions in sight. If you've read anything about it online, you already know that part. CNBC wrote about it in mid-August. Minnesota Monthly wrote about it back in February. The reveal is always the same: convenience store, then cooler door, then a completely different room on the other side.
What most of those write-ups skip is the number that actually explains why the bar exists at all, and why it's still packed on weekends a year after it opened.
The Number Everyone Quotes
CNBC's headline said the business behind The Farmer's Cellar brought in almost $5 million in its first year. That figure is real, but it isn't describing the bar. It's describing everything at 8333 210th Street West: the fuel pumps, the convenience store, and the speakeasy, added together over roughly twelve months starting in May 2025.
Separate the bar out, and the number changes. According to the same CNBC reporting, The Farmer's Cellar itself brought in just over $1.7 million between its May 2025 opening and this past April. That's a little more than a third of the site's total revenue, sitting behind a door that most people driving past would never guess was there.
| What's included | Time window | Revenue | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full site | Fuel, convenience store, speakeasy | May 2025 through roughly April 2026 | Almost $5 million |
| The Farmer's Cellar alone | Speakeasy only | May 2025 through April 2026 | Just over $1.7 million |
The gap between those two figures is where the real story lives. Gasoline sells on razor thin margins. A cocktail finished with liquid nitrogen and a bit of theater does not. Owner Tony Donatell has said around 70 percent of the speakeasy's sales come from drinks rather than food, and that beverage-heavy mix is what makes the smaller number the more profitable one.
Why a Gas Station Kitchen Was the Right Bet
Donatell didn't invent this idea in Lakeville. He tested a version of it 17 years ago in Eagan, when he bought his first gas station convenience store and found it already had a working kitchen with fume hoods and cooking equipment installed. That existing infrastructure is what let him add food service, then a burger concept called Burgers and Bottles, then his first speakeasy, Volstead House, without laying new foundation for any of it.
When a Lakeville convenience store owner reached out in early 2024 asking for help reviving a struggling location, Donatell recognized the same setup: a kitchen that already existed, fuel-stop traffic that already existed, and an empty storefront next door that just needed a reason for people to walk through it. He rented both properties that November and spent the next six months turning the empty space into The Farmer's Cellar.
"I wanted to surprise people with something they did not expect to find behind a cooler door in a suburban gas station," Donatell told Minnesota Monthly.
The bar is now the flagship of The Wondrous Collective, the restaurant group Donatell has grown out of that first Eagan gas station into more than a dozen concepts across the south metro, including Volstead House in Eagan, Tequila Butcher in Chanhassen, Whiskey Inferno in Savage, and Revolve Hall, a food hall in Apple Valley. This summer the collective brought on Thomas Boemer, a James Beard Award nominee formerly of the now closed Revival and Corner Table, as culinary director. Boemer is currently working through a menu revamp at the Lakeville location alongside chef Travis Allen, the same project that has already reshaped the food at Revolve Hall.
The Same Pattern, Twice More This Year
The Farmer's Cellar isn't the only Lakeville hospitality story built on existing space rather than new construction this year.
- Brianno's Chart House marked a ribbon cutting on July 15 for a newly completed outdoor bar and patio at its longstanding 11287 Klamath Trail location, adding room to gather without adding a new building.
- Tapestry Coffee opened its second Lakeville location the same month, moving into the Lakeville Crossing shopping center at 7656 160th Street West rather than building freestanding.
Three different owners, three different concepts, and the same underlying decision: expand into space that already has plumbing, parking, and foot traffic instead of starting from bare ground. For a city that's also in the middle of a busy year of road and trail work elsewhere, that's a noticeably faster way to add somewhere new to go.
What Changes Next
If you've already been to The Farmer's Cellar, the menu you remember may not be the one you'd get today. Boemer's revamp is underway now, and early versions of it lean toward bar food built with more technique behind it than a typical gas station kitchen turns out, still built around the same drink-forward format that made the numbers work in the first place. If you haven't been, the biggest barrier probably isn't the hidden door. It's timing. Guests describe Friday and Saturday nights as reliably packed, with a steady line to get behind the cooler.
None of this changes what Lakeville residents already sensed this year: the town's food and drink scene has been unusually active in 2026. What the revenue breakdown adds is a reason why. The businesses that expanded fastest weren't the ones betting on brand new buildings. They were the ones that found profit hiding in space everyone already drives past every day.
If a friend from out of town asks what's actually happening in Lakeville right now, you have an answer that goes past "there's a bar behind a gas station cooler." You can tell them why it's still there a year later, and why two more businesses down the road made a similar bet this summer.
For more on what's happening around Lakeville and the rest of the Twin Cities, Set Apart Realty keeps a close eye on the details that make each community worth paying attention to. Contact Us anytime you want to talk about what's next.
