FOLEY, Ala. — Alice Bretz grew up under a restaurant table.

“My parents, Charles and Sandy Wrape, bought the restaurant (Wolf Bay Lodge, then in Elberta) in 1973. I was eight and my sister Charlene (Haber) was seven. We’d stay in a little office in the back until my grandmother moved down to Lillian.”

When asked about the funniest thing that had happened in the restaurant, Bretz had to call her sister, who was on a buying trip in Atlanta for the restaurant’s gift shop.

“A streaker ran through the (old) Lodge?” Bretz said in astonishment. “You are kidding. Where was I?” she asked her sister.

“Apparently there was some sort of bet involved,” added Bretz after listening to her sister for a while.

Bretz, who went on to get a degree in accounting and a master’s degree in business administration from the University of West Florida, didn’t originally plan to follow in her parents’ footsteps.

“They needed me,” she said, adding that she had been working at the restaurant during summers and breaks from school.

The family restaurant, which started life as a bait shop in the 1940s, grew. The Wrapes added an addition in 1978.

In 2004, Hurricane Ivan gutted the building. People living in the area at the time recall seeing a boat on top of Wolf Bay Lodge’s roof.

Haber and Bretz rebuilt, and the restaurant opened again in February of 2005.

But, a fire broke out Dec. 7, 2008 and destroyed the restaurant.

“We were insured for $700,000,” said Bretz. “We were told it would cost $1.5 million to rebuild.”

Because it was determined the original site was “uneconomical” to build on again, according to Bretz, the sisters started looking for other places to house their popular eatery, and to make use of the recipes gleaned from locals who worked for the original lodge.

More importantly, there were employees Bretz says were with the company “for years” who were now out of work.

“We invested in Zeke’s Landing Marina,” said Bretz. They took an existing restaurant located on Cotton Bayou in Orange Beach, renovated it and began rebuilding their customer base.

But the pair still hankered after a place near the original location.

“We knew we were getting the tourists,” said Bretz, “but we knew that many of the locals, our old customers, found getting to the new location a hike.”

So, when the city of Foley approached, Haber and Bretz jumped at the chance to return.

“We wanted to get back into this area because this is where our home was.” said Bretz.

The city made the old Wilson Pecan & Candy Co. property available at what Bretz called “an attractive lease.”

The new Lodge retains much of the flavor of the old establishment, with light, paneled walls and a menu that former Lodge customers will recognize.

Because the kitchen was smaller in Orange Beach, some items had to be removed from the menu.

The new kitchen in Foley is a “double” one, Bretz said, and will enable them to accommodate more patrons while providing space for banquet rooms.

But the family is not going to close the Zeke’s Landing location. It has proved popular, and according to their publicist, Eric Straton, the newly renovated Orange Beach location features a, 40-foot bar.