Bismarck, North Dakota - News

The front door closes. Mike Wieland, owner of Mandan's Dairy Queen, smiles and sits at the kitchen table with his wife, Kirstie, and their three children -- Casey, age 11, Connor, age 8, and 5-year-old Kylie.

Over dinner, they talk. They listen, and they look one another in the eyes. They measure their success in the happiness they feel when they're together.

In the Wieland household, simple traditions like family fun days, Sunday church attendance and big weekend breakfasts keep them connected. A sit-down evening meal is an every-night occurrence. Schedules are adjusted to accommodate it.

Mike and Kirstie Wieland, both North Dakota natives, see family success as something worth sacrificing for. They met in 1991 while working for Bismarck's JC Penney store. Mike Wieland was offered advancement opportunities with the company, but it would have meant leaving North Dakota and moving every two years.

"We had a talk and decided we liked our life in North Dakota," he said. "We have a good quality of life. We decided early on in our marriage that the quality of life was more important than our careers."

So Wieland, who has a degree in business administration, took a job with the state Game and Fish Department instead. In the summer of 2000, the family took a leap of faith and bought the Dairy Queen.

Around 23 people currently work for Wieland. He hopes to increase that number to around 30 by the first of April for the summer season.

Wieland said he tries to be a good boss by working with his employee's scheduling needs and trying to pay them well.

"Finding good people isn't as much of an issue as affording good people," he said. "Good people are there if you can afford them, but we have a very competitive industry and the profit margins are shrinking all the time."

As minimum wages increase over the next few years, Wieland said he hopes to increase the wages of his long-term employees as well. He's also started an incentive pay on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.

"We offered our employees an extra 25 percent of their income per hour to work the closing shifts on those days," he said. "That's helped us retain some people by rewarding them for their good work."

Wieland himself works six to 14 hours a day. Even on long work days, the family finds time to be together.

"Sometimes we come to work with our dad and our mom," Connor said.

"This winter, we decided to remodel the lobby," Wieland said. "We're doing that on our own as opposed to hiring it out, so a lot of our spare time goes into that."

In the past, Wieland has given restaurant tours to preschools, scout groups and kindergarten classes. At the end of the tours, he helped the children make their own ice cream cones.

"Sometimes when I'd go to the grocery store or just around town, I hear a little kid say to his mother, ëThat's the ice cream cone guy,'" Wieland said.

It's been around a year since anyone has asked to tour the restaurant, but the family stays involved in the community. Most of their extracurricular activities focus around First Lutheran Church, where Wieland served on the church council for the past three years. Connor is also in Cub Scouts, and Casey crosses over to Boy Scouts this month.

"There are so many places you can go to be part of the community and be active," Wieland said. "Those are family-focused areas, and those are the areas we spend most of our volunteer time."

It's been easy for the family to make friends in Mandan. Wieland said the people in his neighborhood often mow lawns or shovel snow for one another. There are lots of children around, and the schools are good.

"All the people in my (preschool) class are my friends," Kylie said.

Kylie will be going to all-day kindergarten next year. For now, she enjoys being able to go to the Dairy Queen to see her dad during the day. Wieland said there's a slim chance the store will expand someday if his children are interested in the business, but it won't happen anytime soon.

"You increase your opportunity for income, but is that really a sacrifice you're willing to make?" he said. "We're happy with where we are."

One of the changes Wieland has noticed in the past few years is that people are spending less family time together than they used to. The slower pace of living that North Dakota is known for is getting harder to hang onto.

But for the Wielands, progress and personal success is marked by a family-focused, gentle way of life.

"It's nice to be at this pace," said Kirstie Wieland. "We're at a time in our lives when we want to enjoy our children and the things they're doing right now."