Mark Krause is the third generation of Krauses to lead the family business. With four Milwaukee-area locations, Krause Funeral Homes is Wisconsin’s largest funeral service provider. In recent years, Krause is most proud of how his business has embraced diverse cultures in funeral celebrations.

“Our staff is very diversified. We’ve broken through many barriers a lot of funeral homes struggle with,” Krause says. “Funeral homes tend to be very entrenched in how they’ve always done things. Businesses that don’t evolve and change become dinosaurs.”

Krause Funeral Home offers both religious and non-religious funerals. To host more celebratory events honoring one’s life, Krause began offering drinks and food at services, while also including touches like personalized music and photo slideshows. Krause also now offers a therapy dog (a Portuguese water dog named Bennie), and livestreaming for all services.

“My goal is to get rid of the grim, old funeral,” Krause says. “Our job is to make the difficult time a little bit easier.”