One-stop renting

By Mary Robbins
Point Intern

	Coastal Point • RUSLANA LAMBERT From left, Nancy Dee, and Cheryl and Monte Wisbrock, team up to meet the needs of those vacationing in our resorts.

But store owner Cheryl Wisbrock said that even with more than 60 different items to choose from, some customers’ “strange requests” have proven that the rental service doesn’t have everything.

“We’ve had people ask for a margarita machine, a dance floor,” Cheryl Wisbrock said. “We kind of get a kick out of that. I guess because of our name they think we can get anything.”

Cheryl Wisbrock and her husband, Monte, bought the more than 30-year-old business in 1996, when it was called Bethany Rental Service. The name was changed when the couple then bought Resort Rental about five years ago, and the store has since moved from downtown Bethany south to Beach Plaza on Route 1.

Now, as many as 14 employees handle dozens of rental requests every day. This year, eight students from Russia, Poland, Turkey and Bosnia are also working to help package orders and deliver them seven days a week.

“It can be such grueling work that very few people come work for more than one summer,” Cheryl Wisbrock said.

Bethany and Resort Rental Service serves customers residing from the Maryland line up to just north of Rehoboth Beach. If requested, employees will also come to homes in the area and help prepare them for visitors by putting sheets on beds, cleaning and stocking refrigerators.

“It’s a lot of work but we get a lot of fulfillment from it,” Monte Wisbrock said. “This area is totally different from where we use to live.”

Before coming to Bethany Beach in the late 1990s, the Wisbrocks lived in Arlington, Va., where they had a very different lifestyle. Monte Wisbrock played saxophone for the U.S. Army band while Cheryl Wisbrock managed a law firm in Washington, D.C.

“We went from being an entertainer and a manager to wearing shorts to work every day. We always wear shorts,” she said.

After Monte Wisbrock retired from the Army band in 1996, he moved to Bethany Beach and began working at the store. Cheryl Wisbrock continued working in Washington and visited on weekends – until 1999, when she joined her husband to help run the business.

Monte Wisbrock is well-known among area businesses, having served as president of the Bethany-Fenwick Area Chamber of Commerce in 2002. Now, in addition to working long hours in the store, he volunteers as a firefighter for the Bethany Beach Volunteer Fire Company.

“I’m fortunate in that my wife and the other people that I work with expect me to run off when there is a fire alarm. Not all employers would let their employees do that,” Monte Wisbrock said. “But then again — I am the owner.”

The two said they are thankful that their business is expanding every year, so they do not plan to leave the beach area anytime soon.