Walk down Main Street in Nisswa this week and the biggest visual change isn't a new storefront. It's a plywood fence, still standing, wrapped around a building the size of a two-car garage where the Nisswa Mini Donut Stand used to fry dough for anyone walking back from mini golf. The hand-lettered sign taped to it in early summer promised the stand would come back "better than ever." As of the last public update from the Pine and Lakes Echo Journal in mid-June, the owners were still working through construction and state permitting. No reopening date has surfaced publicly since.

That fence is the quiet story. The loud one, if you missed it, is that Roundhouse Brewery is gone.

A Bigger Business Closed Without Much Warning

Roundhouse Brewery closed to the public on January 1, 2026, ending a run of less than six years at its Smiley Road location in Nisswa. The brand started in Brainerd back in April 2016, then outgrew that space by 2020 and bought the former Gull Dam Brewing building in Nisswa instead, a spot with a 20-barrel brewing system nearly three times the capacity of the original Brainerd brewhouse. Ownership built it into what the company itself called a destination: a full kitchen, a music stage, a large outdoor patio, guided axe throwing, and a private event center that could hold 150 people.

The closure announcement, posted on the brewery's own site, was short and plain about it. "We've made the decision to retire and hang up our tap handles," the post read, framing the closure as a retirement rather than a struggle. The taproom, the axe-throwing lounge, and the event space that once anchored that end of downtown are simply not open anymore.

What that leaves behind is a big, purpose-built building sitting empty on Smiley Road, a few blocks from a donut window that's been operating out of a structure roughly one hundredth its size since the 1970s.

Two Businesses That Grew Toward Customers They Already Had

The two moves that actually added something to Main Street this year didn't try to replace what Roundhouse offered. Both came from businesses that were already local and chose to grow toward people who already knew them.

The Chocolate Ox, the candy and ice cream shop that's held down a spot on Main Street for years, opened a third location on Pelican Lake in May 2026. It already runs a second shop in a cottage next to the Main Lodge at Grand View Lodge on Gull Lake. Pelican Lake isn't a new market the company is testing. It's a lake where a lot of Chocolate Ox's existing Main Street customers already own cabins, and the new location follows them there instead of chasing new tourist traffic downtown.

Knotty Pine Bakery + Coffee Shop took a similar path, just earlier. The Brainerd bakery, which owner Marie Kirsch started from a home kitchen in 2019 after a trip back to Nisswa for her grandmother's 80th birthday, opened a second location in the courtyard next to Rafferty's Pizza on Main Street. It's open seven days a week with an expanded coffee menu built around beans from Reality Roasters in Little Falls. That location has been running for over a year now, which makes it less a headline and more a fact of daily life on Main Street. It's also, right now, the closest thing downtown has to a walk-up treat stop while the donut stand sits behind its fence.

Neither business bet on scale. Neither built a stage or an event center. Both grew one room at a time, into places where their own regulars already spend time.

The Calendar That Didn't Notice Any of This

None of this business turnover touched the town's actual event schedule, which ran through 2026 more or less exactly as it has for decades.

• The 63rd annual Nisswa Turtle Races wrapped their Wednesday season on August 12, at the official Turtle Track behind the Nisswa Chamber of Commerce building.
• Crazy Days, the two-day sidewalk sale that discounts retail prices across downtown, ran August 14 and 15.
• National Night Out on August 4 drew families to the fire station, with A&W donating a portion of its sales that day. The chain has given more than $30,000 to Nisswa's fire department over the past year and a half.
• The 51st annual Nisswa Fall Festival, paired with the 21st Smokin' Hot BBQ Challenge, took over downtown on September 19. This year's ribs went to Bone Island, and the band Wyld Ryce closed out the night with an outdoor concert after a day that included a pancake breakfast from the fire department, a bean bag tournament, and a Fall Artisan and Crafters Market set up in Pioneer Village.

None of those events depend on a single storefront to happen. The Fall Festival's first year predates Roundhouse by decades. The turtle races have run since 1963. A brewery can close on January 1 and a donut stand can sit half-built through an entire summer, and the town's calendar keeps its shape anyway.

What's Actually Coming Up

Looking ahead, the Nisswa Chamber of Commerce has City of Lights set for Friday, November 27, the annual event that gets Main Street decorated for the season and includes a window decorating contest among downtown businesses. After that, the 55th annual Nisswa Winter Jubilee is scheduled for February 12 through 14, 2027, bringing three days of winter events back downtown.

So if you're wondering what's actually different about walking through town right now compared to a year ago: the big brewery building on Smiley Road is empty, the donut stand's return is still an open question with no confirmed date, and the businesses that did expand this year did it quietly, by following their own customers rather than by building something bigger. The festivals never missed a beat. Main Street's shape hasn't changed much. What's inside a couple of its buildings has.

If you've been walking past that fence hoping for a bag of hot mini donuts, the honest answer right now is Knotty Pine's coffee counter or a scoop from The Chocolate Ox while you wait it out.

We pay attention to this kind of thing at Northland Sotheby's International Realty because we're a few minutes from this stretch of Main Street ourselves, and we'd rather know what's actually open before we send anyone downtown for a coffee.