How does a new cigar lounge open in 2026 in a state where indoor smoking has been banned since 2009?
Tasting Room Waunakee opened to the public on October 1 in the Village Crossing building at 114 E. Main St. It held a members-only preview the night before and a Waunakee Area Chamber of Commerce ribbon cutting at 11 a.m. on opening day. It opened on a license bought from a business in the Wisconsin Dells, and that license explains a lot about the space and about the limits of what Waunakee's own boards could decide.
The lounge is in Suite 109. According to the license application in the Village Board's April 20, 2026 meeting packet, it has about 5,000 square feet inside, a full-service bar, lounge seating throughout the main level and an enclosed walk-in humidor. It sells premium cigars and pipe tobacco only. Cigarettes aren't allowed in tobacco bars that fall under the state exemption.
Food comes from next door. The Plan Commission's approval lets guests order from nearby restaurants and bring the food in, and the lounge's own preview notice pointed guests to The Lone Girl Brewing Company, its neighbor in Suite 101. The Lone Girl's kitchen is closed Mondays. It runs 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Sunday, so the brewery's kitchen sets the window for dinner at the lounge. When the brewery opened, The Capital Times named its co-owners as Kevin and Kerry Abercrombie and Paul and Tammi Kozlowski, so the newcomer is leaning on one of downtown's established kitchens.
The business isn't new to Dane County. Its Monona location traces back to a 1990s liquor and wine shop that also sold cigars. Jessica and Jason Smith have owned it since 2017 and have run it at its Yahara River site since 2019.
Wisconsin's smoke-free law bans smoking in enclosed taverns, restaurants and workplaces. Its exception for cigar and pipe smoking covers only a retail tobacco store or a tobacco bar "in existence on June 3, 2009," according to Wis. Stat. 101.123. The statute defines a tobacco bar as a tavern that earns at least 15 percent of its annual gross income from cigar and pipe tobacco sold for use on the premises.
That date fixed the list of places that qualify, and nobody can newly qualify. So in April, Jason Smith told the Village Board that the Waunakee lounge would open on a grandfathered license he had bought from a Wisconsin Dells business, the Waunakee Tribune's sister paper reported.
Main Street was the second try. Tasting Room first approached the village in 2022, and at that point the Waunakee Tribune reported a cigar bar planned for Kilkenny Farms. The 2026 application is for a different site downtown, which HNG News described as a second attempt. The 2026 approvals came in this order:
The April 20 meeting was mostly about who decides. Kleinmaier told trustees he had been ready to tell them, "You really have no choice to approve this license," until the April 17 memo arrived. That memo conflicted with a 2021 memo from the same Legislative Council staff. "We're kind of caught in the middle on a state issue… We don't have any case law on this," he said, according to HNG News.
Smith disagreed with that reading. He said the memo dealt with creating a new location, while his plan moved an existing license from one place to another. He also argued that moving the business into a space with smoke-removal HVAC served public health.
Kleinmaier's advice changed what the vote meant. The board could approve or deny the sale of tobacco. Whether smoking is allowed inside the business is for the state to decide, so trustees weighed the application on product sales alone. Village President Kristin Runge, who said she worked on Smokefree 2000 and the statewide ban in the 1990s, called the decision "very difficult." Trustee Chris Zellner said he was "99.99% in my core against" smoking, but that this didn't settle how he should vote on the license in front of him. Trustee Nila Frye cast the dissenting vote and said residents had contacted her about it.
The question of whether a grandfathered tobacco bar can move remains with the state. Neither the statute's text nor the April reporting settles it.
Inside, the lounge didn't need a village permit to allow smoking. Plan commissioners and staff said indoor smoke falls largely outside the village's control. The patio was different. It needed a conditional use permit, and the village wrote its rules into that permit.
The license application describes an outdoor area of about 800 square feet. A permanent metal fence encloses it, with two ADA-compliant gates, propane fire tables, portable propane heaters and mounted speakers. Tobacco use is allowed there. Because of the heaters and fire tables, the patio is built for a Wisconsin November as much as for summer. The same document sets these limits:
| Patio rule | What the permit sets |
|---|---|
| Outdoor service and amplified music, Sunday–Thursday | Ends at 9 p.m. |
| Outdoor service and amplified music, Friday–Saturday | Ends at 10 p.m. |
| Special-event exceptions | Police Chief may waive the time limits |
| Fire pits | Must be approved by the fire department |
| Grounds for revoking the permit | Significant complaints from neighboring residences, police calls, noise violations, or outdoor smoke becoming an issue |
The smoke condition was the one commissioners argued over. Commissioner and Trustee Joe Zitzelsberger added a review based on the amount of smoke produced outside, citing the apartments in the Village Crossing building. "I just want to make sure that we protect the people who are already living there," he said, HNG News reported. Commissioner Melissa Hunt cast the lone no vote in the 6-1 approval. She questioned whether a standard based on smoke "volume" could be defined or enforced. Community Development Director Lauren Freeman said any complaints would go to staff and then to the commission. Kleinmaier added that a few complaints wouldn't automatically shut the patio down.
That leaves the patio rules in force from here on, with review starting when someone complains.
The building owner did its own checking before the lease. In an April 13 letter to Village Administrator Todd Schmidt, included in the board packet, the owner said it visited the Monona location at 800 W. Broadway to see whether cigar smoke was a concern. It also asked Galaway Companies about the use in a mixed-use building with apartments and reviewed HVAC plans meant to stop air from moving through the building. HNG News identified that letter of support as coming from Hovde Properties.
The system described in the letter is a separate HVAC unit that brings in 100 percent outside air. It filters intake and return air, controls humidity and recovers energy from the exhaust. It needed extra roof framing and an added 400-amp circuit. The construction plan also called for a fire-related wall reaching to the underside of the deck to prevent airflow to the rest of the building. Inside, where village rules don't reach, the building's design is what was planned to keep the smoke contained.
A week after opening, Tasting Room Waunakee was already one of the listed stops at the Chamber's October 8 Mystic Night Market, the reworked version of the old Witch's Walk. Other stops included The Lone Girl, Red & White Winebar, Lundy's Ice Cream, Especially Stroopwafel, Pageberry Mercantile, Rocks & Relics, Wisconsin Candle Company and Waunakee Furniture ETC. Check-in for the night was at the Chamber office at 100 E. Main St., a block from the lounge.
The next big night on that stretch is the village's Light the Night Parade on Friday, December 4, from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. It runs down Main Street from O'Malley Street to Village Park. Two weeks earlier, on Saturday, November 21, the Friends of Waunakee Public Library holiday fair fills Heritage Elementary and Waunakee Intermediate from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., with more than 110 vendors, a bake sale, a book sale and a container raffle.
On a December parade night, The Lone Girl's kitchen takes Friday orders until 10 p.m. The lounge's patio has to stop outdoor service at that same hour.
The state law and local permits described here are general information drawn from public records and reporting, not legal advice. Anyone with a question about how they apply should ask an attorney or the Village of Waunakee directly.
At Lessing Real Estate, we keep track of how Plan Commission and Village Board decisions shape downtown Waunakee, from patio permits to who's moving into Village Crossing. If you own a home near Main Street and want to know how this year's changes downtown might affect its value, ask us for your free home valuation.
7633 Ganser Way Suite 101 Madison, WI 53719
7633 Ganser Way Suite 101 Madison, WI 53719