Biz Buzz shares business tidbits from the tri-states. In addition to this update from Cuba City, Wis., we will share additional developments in Tuesday’s edition.

CUBA CITY, Wis. — In a green binder under his desk, Richard Krueger keeps a list of the services he has helped facilitate in his time at Haudenshield Funeral Home & Crematory.

The list is broken down by year and includes the name of the individual, as well as the date of the service or burial. Flipping through the 2000s, the lists look relatively uniform until roughly 2011 and beyond, when yellow lines begin to appear in growing numbers.

“All these yellow highlights were cremations,” Krueger said. “You go back to the early 2000s, and you didn’t really see any, but all of a sudden in 2011 you can see that more and more cremation requests came in, and those numbers never really went down.”

Haudenshield Funeral Home has been operational since 1919 and has facilitated both traditional burials and cremations. For much of that time, however, the funeral home carried out cremations at an off-site facility and returned the ashes to Cuba City for the family’s retrieval.

Earlier this year, however, Krueger and his daughter and fellow funeral home director, Jill Krueger, took the next step toward improving their services with the addition of an on-site crematory in a building adjacent to the funeral home at 2424 State Road 80.

The pair said the goal in doing so was to better serve grieving families and reduce the logistical stress of having to coordinate transportation and use of the off-site facility.

“Doing it off site didn’t change the fact that the individual stayed in our care the whole time, but I think there’s still an extra level of comfort for families to know that everything is happening right here (in Cuba City),” Richard Krueger said.

Jill Krueger added that having the crematory on site has been helpful in conversations with individuals or family members about various service options and related costs, considerations and benefits.

In the funeral home’s showroom, she also can show visitors a selection of urns and other related items with clearly marked pricing. Cremation can be less expensive than traditional burials, she explained, which is one of several factors families might consider after a loved one’s death.

“We try to be very transparent with the families that we serve,” she said. “We want them to know all their options so that there’s never a moment where they look back and wish they hdd done something different.”

Haudenshield Funeral Home & Crematory can be reached by phone at 608-744-2400 or can be found online at haudenshieldfuneralhome.com.