An unintended endorsement of an Inver Grove Heights strip club became an opportunity for the owner and an enduring embarrassment for the buttoned-down Minnesota Super Bowl Host Committee.
King of Diamonds, a "gentleman's club" in Inver Grove Heights, landed in the NFL Business Connect directory, a list of minority and women-owned contractors available to provide catering and services for Super Bowl parties and events.
Deb Kalsbeck, the owner of the business with the legal name Kladek Inc., said she started but never completed the paperwork to be certified as a woman-owned business. She was "kind of surprised" and didn't know about her inclusion in the directory until she was contacted by a reporter for the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal, Kalsbeck said.
"I kind of like it," she said. "Honestly, there aren't that many female-owned gentleman's clubs in the country."
The committee wasn't so amused.
"Obviously, they should never have been included," Super Bowl spokeswoman Andrea Mokros said. "Kladek Inc. was one of more than 1,000 businesses that applied, and it should not have made the list of the 400-plus businesses in our Business Resource Directory."
The committee has temporarily removed the directory from its website to "thoroughly audit" each of the remaining businesses on the list, Mokros said.
Kalsbeck's father opened the club in 1965. She bought him out in 2009.
