LAKE CARROLL — When Lake Carroll’s clubhouse bar and grill was looking for someone to sign a new lease on life, Matt Prescott stepped in.

Five years and a few tons of Chicken George later, the lease Prescott signed to operate one of his Candlelight Inn locations in Lake Carroll is hitting its stride.

June will mark the fifth anniversary of the Lake Carroll location’s opening, and Prescott and restaurant manager Steve St. Clair have seen the place through a lot, from the challenges of opening during a pandemic and going through early growing pains to becoming a cornerstone of the community.

With a menu that offers something for everyone — including Candlelight’s signature Chicken George — the restaurant has become a destination for dining, both for Lake Carroll members and the public, and the bar has become a popular gathering place, from golfers drinking a few rounds after a round to friends getting together to unwind. It also hosts events ranging from local bands to the occasional music trivia night.

Getting to know the people of Lake Carroll has been something that Prescott — whose family began the business in Sterling — has enjoyed over the past five years.

“It’s pretty amazing,” Prescott said. “We made it to the other side. Any time you start a business like this, the first couple of years are tough. The location and the people are what makes the place special. If you have an issue, you can call the [Lake Carroll] Association and they help you.”

With the Lake Carroll location being smaller than other Candlelights, the menu is pared down a bit, so Prescott and St. Clair sprinkle in some variety to keep patrons coming back for more. They review the menu twice a year to make any changes they think are needed, and special menu items are announced throughout the late spring and into summer.

St. Clair, a former bartender who has been with the restaurant since a week after it opened, has seen two particular menu items become just as popular as Chicken George.

The Philly cheesesteak was initially just an occasional menu item, St. Clair said, but “it sold so well that we just had to put that on the menu,” he said. “With the southwest egg rolls, we’ve had four different kinds of egg rolls since we’ve been here and had been rotating them around, but the second we rotated southwest egg rolls off the menu, it’s an uproar. They’re a fan favorite.”

As with any new restaurant that comes to a community, interest was high when Candlelight first opened. Lake residents wanted to see what the new dining option in their community was like, and that curiosity peaked soon after it opened. During its first Fourth of July weekend, the place was packed with residents and their friends and family. While a full house is normally a good thing for a business, a smooth operation just wasn’t in the cards that weekend.

“The first Fourth of July was a nightmare,” St. Clair said. “We didn’t know what to expect, and we had only been here a month. We were running about two-and-a-half hour ticket times on food. We had just turned on online ordering for the first time, and we didn’t know how to shut it off; and online ordering was telling everyone 30 minutes for pickup, and we were running two hours. We had people standing in line. We had a band downstairs who couldn’t get to a server and were going online to order.”

Today, the kinks have been worked out and St. Clair and his crew have a handle on handling things. While sales dipped during the restaurant’s second Fourth of July weekend, they’ve been climbing each of the years since. St. Clair has pulled in managers from Candlelight’s other locations to assist in recent years, employee turnover is down, and residents’ familiarity with the place has helped make the customer experience better, Prescott said.

“We’ve learned how to operate it better,” Prescott said. “Steve has been here since the first year. We’ve had consistency with the same team being there for three or four years now, and that makes a big difference — they have figured it out. Having Steve here for his fifth year, that makes a difference, too. People know Steve. If they have a problem, they can go to Steve. He runs it. I’m there if there’s problems, but other than that, that’s his baby, and he takes great care of it.”

And for St. Clair, the real measure of that progress isn’t just smoother operations — it’s what customers notice at the table.

“My favorite compliment is not, ‘Wow, that food is amazing,’ but ‘Wow, our server took such good care of us,’” St. Clair said. “When people are saying that the service is really good, that makes me really happy.”

That good service comes from a crew who’s committed to keeping the customers satisfied, like bartender Elizabeth Madison, who has been with the restaurant for two years. She said the supportive environment among staff helps create a positive experience for customers.

“I like the staff and the company,” Madison said. “Our managers are really nice and supportive. The Chicken George is really popular. The golf course is up and coming now, and we’re excited to see our golfers coming back; and the lake is about to open, and so I’m pretty excited about that too.”

Assistant manager Jessica Wright, also in her second year, said the people — both coworkers and customers — are what make each shift different. Wright manages the place from November to March when St. Clair visits family in Texas; that’s also when the kitchen hours are reduced.

“I like the people,” Wright said. “The people make the atmosphere. We may have the same people kind of on a daily basis, but it’s never the same day by day. Not everyone drinks the same stuff, so someone will throw you for a loop every now and then. As a person coming from outside of Lake Carroll, it has been very different than what I thought it was going to be. It’s very inviting and people are very open, they take you under your wing instantly.”

For Prescott, those day-to-day interactions are what ultimately define the business.

“We’re in the relationship business, that’s what we’re truly in,” Prescott said. “You can go get a burger at a lot of places, you can get chicken strips at a lot of places — you can’t get Chicken George everywhere — and you can get pizza at a lot of places. Why do you pick one place over the other? It’s the people that make these places go.”

Prescott knows what he’s talking about.

His family has been in the restaurant business for nearly 60 years, when his father Bob, Bob’s cousin Lyman and Chuck Sisson opened the first Candlelight in Sterling in 1967. Bob and his wife Jan — for whom Chicken George’s house dipping sauce is named — eventually became sole owners and moved to a bigger location in town in 1989. That location closed in 2023, but the Candlelight name has continued to grow, adding locations in neighboring Rock Falls in 2004 and Clinton, Iowa, in 2010.

With acquisitions of bars in Sterling, Rock Falls and Dixon in the past couple of decades, the Candlelight Group umbrella was formed. Two of the group’s newest business are Emerson’s Pub in Rock Falls, which opened in 2024, and Artisan Oven in Sterling, which opened in March. Both establishments feature pizza as its main menu staple.

As for that other partner in the restaurant’s success, which goes by the name of George, it’s been part of Candlelight’s menu since the 1970s, created by a cook named George who originally just cooked up the deep-fried chicken tenders for himself. When a customer one day suggested something that wasn’t on the menu, Bob had George make his chicken entree. It caught on, and these days around 6,000 pounds of it are served weekly throughout Candlelight’s restaurants.

“We buy a lot of higher quality chicken than a lot of places and hand-batter it,” St. Clair said. “If we ran out of Chicken George, or even Jan’s sauce, we might as well shut the doors.”

When Prescott opened Candlelight at Lake Carroll, he retained the Clubhouse’s popular pizza on the menu. It was his first foray into the dish. Although pizza sales have declined in recent years, both he and St. Clair are confident that the increased familiarity of operating both Emerson’s and Artisan Oven will help Candlelight’s pizza sales improve soon. In fact, Artisan Oven offers a Chicken George pizza.

When Prescott opened Candlelight at Lake Carroll, he retained the Clubhouse’s popular pizza on the menu. It was his first foray into the dish, but he’s since parlayed pizza sales into a bigger part of his overall operation. Both Emerson’s and Artisan Oven feature pizza as a main menu staple, with the latter of the two featuring a Chicken George pizza among its wood-fired pizzas. While pizza sales at Lake Carroll’s location have dipped in recent years, with the experience he’s gained, Prescott, and St. Clair, are confident they’ll get a bigger slice of the local pizza market again.

“We’re going to revisit that,” Prescott said. “I know a little more about pizza now than I knew then.”

The Lake Carroll Candlelight’s look has changed over the years. The bar was redone two years into opening, and the dining room was remodeled two years ago. St. Clair is also looking at getting new carpet for the downstairs banquet room, home of annual community staples such as the Craft Show and the Lake Carroll Yacht Club’s Robber’s Bingo.

For St. Clair, the biggest change has in the relationships he’s built.

“I didn’t know what to expect when I started here,” he said. “The thing that has surprised me versus any other job I’ve had in restaurants is that we have the same clientele over and over again. Most restaurants, there’s some regulars and mostly people driving by. It surprised me about just how much of a family people in Lake Carroll can be. You get to know these people, and they’re amazing people.”

The same sense of community has defined the restaurant’s five-year run, Prescott said.

“We’re just very grateful of the support and how great the community has been to us,” Prescott said. “It’s like you’re in your own little town. There’s a lot of good people. The community is so caring and friendly.”

Candlelight Inn is located at 29-11 Ironwood Blvd. in Lake Carroll. Current hours for the kitchen and bar change depending on the season, and are found on its Facebook page or at candlelightinnrestaurant.com/lakecarroll. Call 815-493-2810 for carryout orders or for more information. Go to the website to learn more about the Candlelight Group of bars and restaurants.