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If you ask Tina Kuehn, she’s spent most of her life taking care of people.

Some of the ways have been obvious – such as running three restaurants and introducing downtown Sioux Falls diners to foods that seemed exotic to a Midwestern palate 30 years ago.

Others have been less so – making room for people on the fringes, who needed a job and somewhere to prove themselves. They found a home in her kitchen.

Kuehn owned and operated Kristina’s Café and then Café 334 in downtown Sioux Falls and K Restaurant in the 8th and Railroad Center. She retired in 2024 and lives near Baltic. But for many years, she was one of the faces of the downtown culinary scene.

“I just felt like it was the right time for me to leave. The restaurant scene was changing in a good way, and I had been in it for so much of my life,” Kuehn said of her retirement. “I just didn’t want to give that much of myself to it anymore.”

Giving back

She began thinking about how she wants to spend her time – and what she wants her legacy to be.

“I’m the one who never had a retirement plan. I was very isolated and just took care of the people who worked for me and my little core group of family,” Kuehn said. “And then after my mom died, it was just a passing of a torch.”

Kuehn’s family has a long philanthropic history in Sioux Falls – Kuehn Park is named after them, and their roots go back to the late 1800s. Kuehn decided to continue that tradition with the Sioux Falls Area Community Foundation.

“My family has always put their trust in the Community Foundation,” she said. Kuehn doesn’t have children – though she is close to her extended family, including nieces and nephews who have moved away. One sister also lives in Sioux Falls. “I want people in the community to remember us.”

So, Kuehn is thinking ahead about the impact she wants to leave. Her plans ensure that a future endowment through her estate will support the causes she cares about most. While her nieces and nephews will direct future grants from the endowment, Kuehn has set thoughtful guardrails. Their grants will focus on the issues important to her, allowing flexibility to meet future community needs, but always staying true to her family’s core values.

She’s also empowering them to make distributions where they live. A portion of the endowment will support causes in Sioux Falls, while another portion can be directed to the communities her nieces and nephews now call home – instilling in them the value of place-based giving.

“They also will get to donate on their own, to what they think is important,” Kuehn said.

Mary Kolsrud, chief philanthropy officer with the Community Foundation, said the plan allows the Kuehn family’s legacy of generosity to continue.

“At the heart of what we do is ensuring that donors’ wishes are carried out in meaningful ways,” Kolsrud said. “This plan not only reflects Kuehn’s passion for Sioux Falls but also empowers the next generation to give back to the places they call home. It’s a powerful reminder that philanthropy rooted in community – and in family – can create a lasting impact for years to come.”

Serving others

Kuehn’s career has been varied.

After she went to the University of South Dakota, she worked in managing restaurants in the Twin Cities. “Soon I learned, that wasn’t where I wanted to be,” she said. “If you’re going to manage, you’re going to do every job in the restaurant. I ended up doing so many more cooking shifts, because someone would be sick or wouldn’t show up.”

She moved around a bit, worked in a bakery for a while and eventually decided to go to culinary school in San Francisco. After graduation, she worked at the U.S. embassy in Germany. It was that experience, in part, that made her think about moving back home. There also was the draw of being closer to family and being surrounded by a community that she knew – and that knew her. So, in the early 1990s, she came home.

“I wanted to spend time with my parents and be part of the family. My sisters lived here, and all their kids and husbands, and it was the best decision I made,” she said.

All of that helped create the right environment for her to open her first restaurant.

“Nobody cooked like I did, or how I learned to cook,” Kuehn said. “People had never eaten risotto – they called it crunchy rice. I had to stop using white pepper because it blew people away – they thought it was too spicy.”

It wasn’t always easy – and people didn’t understand what she was trying to do. For instance – more than one person told her she’d never survive if she didn’t add video lottery machines to her restaurant.

But that wasn’t the vibe she was after. Instead, she focused on the food.

“I just started cooking things that I wanted to eat and that were different, like fresh fish, and people were responding,” Kuehn said. “People were traveling, and they ate this kind of food other places.”

But there was more to her mission than just great food.

As Kuehn began hiring people to work in her restaurant, she found herself more and more supporting and championing people who were in difficult situations – just out of prison and needing work history, maybe someone struggling to get a ride to work.

“I just saw so many things owning a restaurant,” said Kuehn, especially being in central and downtown Sioux Falls. “I’ve worked with people from Good Shepherd. My mom was on the board at Good Shepherd. I’ve hired people from there. Or people from day labor places, coming out of the system. Or with the St. Francis House. You just see people with dignity.”

It may not have been the traditional way to give back to the community, but over time Kuehn began to understand what it takes to support all the edges of a community.

She started getting more involved when the City of Sioux Falls began discussing tearing down the historic house at Tuthill Park. Not only did she care about the history of the home, but she knew it was an affordable and beautiful rental space for people – and it was well used.

“I grew up in that area, and I love that house,” Kuehn said. “We need places like that in the community, and that kind of got me started.”

Then, after her parents died, she realized she could have an even larger impact.

“My parents had always been philanthropic,” Kuehn said.

“The Sioux Falls Area Community Foundation knows what I’m thinking and what I want – they understand my values and approach to philanthropy,” Kuehn said. “They’ll be able to suggest causes and organizations to my nieces and nephews that align with what I care about.” She called that kind of expertise invaluable to her peace of mind. “It’s such a differentiator.”

And it keeps most of the giving in Sioux Falls – which is important to Kuehn and is in line with the values she was raised with.

“It can make such a difference in the community. You can see lasting change happening through that,” Kuehn said.