During its shutdown from January 4-16, employees of Baumgartner Cheese Store and Tavern cleared all the money thrown on the ceiling, which is generously donated by customers.

“We do this once each year and donate it to different local charities,” said Chris Soukup, owner. “We last cleared the ceiling in March of 2025, and in those 10 months we collected $3,244.” 

Soukup said $2,000 will be donated to the Green County Family YMCA, and the remaining $1,244 will be donated to Green Haven, an organization that provides the community with 24/7 support and crisis intervention for victims of domestic abuse. 

“They’re a wonderful organization who are currently raising money to make desperately needed repairs to their building, so they can continue providing those services,” Soukup said. 

Anyone that would like to donate to Green Haven can go to https://greenhaven4help.com/.

Next door to Baumgartner’s, another building owned by Soukup is under a renovation project. That include’s the Eugene Hotel, which first opened a century ago. 

“As a part of those renovations, we are building a new, much bigger kitchen for Baumgartner’s, and adding an interior passageway for guests from Baumgartner’s to the hotel,” Soukup said. “We needed to cut those two openings through the four layers of brick that separate the buildings, to accommodate for those changes later in the year. We also needed to move and repair a few booths, have our floors refinished, and a lot of other maintenance items for our building and equipment that are difficult to achieve while open, so we took care of as much of that as possible during the shutdown.”

He said “nothing major” will change about Baumgartner’s, but they will be better able to accommodate its guests during busy times with a kitchen that is adequately sized, and a few additional tables in a small new dining room.