Longtime life and business partners craft microbrewery in … · 2018-07-18 · IPAs, or India Pale...
Transcript of Longtime life and business partners craft microbrewery in … · 2018-07-18 · IPAs, or India Pale...
5:59 AM, July 14, 2013 |
In Norm and Bonnie LePageʼs long marriage and career, theyʼve
owned more than 20 restaurants and food businesses, from their
first doughnut shop in Dearborn to Birminghamʼs stylish Big Rock
Chop House, one of the cityʼs most popular destinations.
“There are way too many to remember,” Norm LePage said last
week, as he and his wife talked about their 42 years in the risky
restaurant business — and their most ambitious project yet, set to
open Thursday.
At an age when most couples are enjoying retirement, they and
their longtime friends and business partners Ray and Mary
Nicholson are poised to open a $3 million-$5 million state-of-the-art
craft brewery, with Big Rockʼs award-winning brew master Dan
Rogers in charge of production, distribution and operations.
The 12,000-square-foot Griffin Claw Brewing Co. at 575 S. Eton
also includes a taproom-restaurant, outdoor German-style
biergarten with fire pit, cocktail bar, distillery and outdoor patio. Now
a sleek, modern structure, the brewhouse will eventually be
covered in ivy, “so it will look like it has been here 100 years … like
Longtime life and business partners craft microbrewery inBirmingham
By SylviaRector
Detroit FreePress StaffWriter
FILED UNDER
Business
Michigan Business
Dearborn
the breweries in Germany,” says Bonnie
LePage.
She and Mary Nicholson own the brewery;
they also are partners and co-owners, with
their husbands, of Big Rock, its cigar bar and
its Reserve special-events center, all just a
few blocks from Griffin Claw in the
Birmingham Rail District. The husbands
cannot own the brewery because they
already have regular liquor licenses.
LePage never dreamed she would own a
full-scale brewery, much less plunge into the
trendy, arcane world of craft beer at age 69.
But the awards Rogers began winning for
Big Rockʼs IPAs finally got the attention of
her husband, 72, whom she calls “the
ultimate risk-taker entrepreneur.”
IPAs, or India Pale Ales, are among the most
popular craft beers in the country. And
Rogers — brewing only 600 to 700 barrels of
beer a year at the restaurant — beat out 103
other entrants to win a gold medal for Normʼs
Raggedy Ass IPA at the 2010 World Beer
Cup competition in Denver.
“I didnʼt realize it was such a huge deal until I
saw Miller Beer advertising that they won a
gold cup at the same thing for their regular
beer,” Norm LePage said. “Then we started
getting calls from people from other states
who wanted to buy our beer, but our license
was a brewpub. All we could do was serve it
at Big Rock.”
When the West Bloomfield couple began
thinking about building a brewery so they
could distribute it, they considered just
relocating Big Rockʼs brewing equipment, but
they had so much interest from distributors,
they decided to go bigger and start from
scratch with new equipment.
Powers Distributing, which handles
MillerCoors products and 79 other suppliers,
will distribute Griffin Claw across the state,
buying the breweryʼs entire first yearʼs
production except for what the Claw taproom
sells, he said.
Even before opening, the brewery has
ordered enough additional fermenters to
Bonnie and Norm LePage have been part of such
ventures as Chicken Joy broaster shops, the Townsend
Hotel and Big Rock Chop House in Birmingham. The
Griffin Claw Brewing Co. opens Thursday. / Andre J.
Jackson/Detroit Free Press
Griffen Claw Brewing Co. in Birmingham is a $3
million-$5 million state-of-the-art craft brewery, with Big
Rock Chop House's brew master Dan Rogers in charge
of operations. / Andre J. Jackson/Detroit Free Press
This grilled-cheese sandwich will come with spiced
applewood bacon.
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double its original planned capacity to 15,000
barrels a year, which is still small by brewery
standards and less than Powers would like to
buy, Norm LePage said.
Powersʼ chief operating officer, Gary
Thompson, isnʼt concerned about whether
people will buy the beer. The problem with
craft beer isnʼt demand — itʼs supply. “At this
point in time, thereʼs not enough to go
around,” he says.
Demand grows
Indeed, Griffin Claw is opening at a time
when Americaʼs thirst for craft beer has
never been greater and breweries are
opening at record rates. Michigan, ranked
fifth in the country with 140-plus craft
breweries, also has one of the fastest-
growing brewing industries. “New ones are
opening every week,” says Scott Graham,
executive director of the Michigan Brewers Guild. “We canʼt keep
up with them.”
The new Birmingham facility includes several pieces of custom
equipment not previously used in small breweries, says Rogers.
One is its high-tech, high-efficiency filtering system, made by a
company whose industrial units are used worldwide and cost $10
million or more. But Griffin Clawʼs, which cost $150,000, is “the first
small unit in the world, so we expect people will be coming from all
over to see it,” Rogers says.
“It was a big decision to build a brewery,” says Bonnie LePage, who
has been her husbandʼs sleeves-rolled-up partner in everything
from Chicken Joy broaster shops to the launch of Birminghamʼs
Townsend Hotel to the evolution of Big Rock into a stylish,
high-profile restaurant.
Their first business was much less glamorous. They were living in
Germany in 1971 but wanted to come home, so Norm LePage
wrote his father-in-law and asked him to find a business they could
afford with their small savings. He ended up with Southern Creme
doughnuts in Dearborn, working nights to make the doughnuts that
his father-in-law sold to Ford Rouge plant workers along with
sandwiches and drinks.
“I discovered the doughnut business wasnʼt for me,” LePage says,
so he decided to try restaurants. They bought a fine-dining place in
Walled Lake called the Squireʼs Table, but that didnʼt feel quite right,
either.
“After about a year, there I was in the middle of Walled Lake in a
tuxedo and ruffled shirt, flipping Caesar salads, and somehow it just
didnʼt go with the community,” LePage says. So they closed,
remodeled and reopened as Nifty Normanʼs with a casual menu
and a killer burger. “That place rocked and rolled every night ever
after that,” he says.
With Niftyʼs going strong, they branched out, opening numerous
Nuggetʼs breakfast spots, Dawn Donuts shops, bagel shops and
Chicken Joy places over the next several years from Redford
Township to Union Lake.
Bonnie LePage was still running Niftyʼs, a role that wasnʼt always
comfortable for the conservative former schoolteacher. “That was in
the days when waitresses wore short sexy dresses with little
aprons,” she says. And on Wednesdays there were lingerie fashion
shows “with cheesy models walking around” that brought in
businessmen, she says. “And Iʼm saying to Norman, ʻI didnʼt sign up
for this!ʼ ”
Success started small
But she was also running a thriving bar and bat mitzvah party room
in their basement lounge, called the Mushroom Cellar — and that
led to their first big break in business.
Prominent Birmingham developer Eric Lutz attended one of the
parties and was so impressed with the coupleʼs success in such an
unlikely spot that he invited them to open a restaurant in the old
Birmingham train station, which he and developer Tony Brown had
just bought. The result was Normʼs Eton Street Station, opened in
1984 and converted to the upscale Big Rock in 1997.
Their partnership with Lutz and Brown also got them their next offer,
to be minority partners and do the food at the Townsend Hotel,
which Brown was building. Bonnie LePage was asked to fill in as
temporary manager before it opened, “and four years later, she was
still running the hotel,” Norm LePage says. “She was the one who
put it on the map.” She succeeded in having the Townsend
accepted by the Preferred Hotel Group, which represents top
destinations all over the world.
Running the Townsend was “an amazing job,” she says. “This was
my chance to shine, to show who I was. … It was a dream.”
The LePagesʼ other projects have included two mammoth
restaurants they were recruited to open in the old Indianapolis train
station and the Mac-Ray Harbor restaurant in Harrison Township,
where they met and became partners with the Nicholsons.
Thrill of the chase
Griffin Claw isnʼt something Bonnie LePage had counted on at this
stage. She had been hoping to do some long-delayed redecorating
at home. “My kitchen is so old, I have one of those brown stoves,”
she says. But business needs have always come first for them, so
the redecorating will have to wait.
“I was talking to someone the other day, and they said, ʻWhy are
you doing this?ʼ And I said, ʻI am married to the ultimate risk-taker
entrepreneur.ʼ … It was never about the money for Norm. Itʼs about
the thrill of the chase. Itʼs the project. If it was about the money,
weʼd be living this lavish lifestyle, but itʼs all here — and there,” she
says, pointing around the Big Rock dining room.
“This is a partnership of a real, true, balls-to-the-wall kind of
entrepreneur, and a wife whoʼs going like this every day,” she said,
circling her hands wildly over her head. “Sometimes it overwhelms
me.” But at the same time, she said, “there arenʼt a lot of husbands
and wives who could work together all these years.”
Their daughter, Nicole, lives in New York and isnʼt interested in the
restaurant business, but their son, Scott, owns three, including
Clubhouse BFD in Rochester.
“I want Scott to take our position at the brewery and perhaps at Big
Rock in the next two years,” says Norm LePage. “I donʼt ever want
to retire, and I donʼt think Bonnie does, but perhaps we could be a
support system for him.”
So is Griffin Claw his last project? “Oh, no. Weʼre already looking at
other things coming our way and just making sure itʼs the right
situation,” he says.
The brown kitchen stove may have to last a little longer.
Contact Sylvia Rector: 313-222-5026 and [email protected].
Follow her on Twitter @SylviaRector.