Comings & Goings: Want your favorite stores and restaurants to survive? Stay local
3 minute read
Coming: Raising Cain’s Chicken Fingers is set to open in late November or early December in the former Watermelon Music site downtown. Wendy Weitzel/Courtesy photo
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Every Sunday, I offer insight on businesses changes in the area. Is that restaurant closed? Why? What will take its place? These are questions I asked 20 years ago as managing editor of The Enterprise. I continue today because we’re all still curious, and these small, independent businesses need our support.
We’re lucky in Davis to have a thriving downtown and residents who understand the importance of shopping locally. This column would not be possible in Roseville, which is filled with chain retailers. I can call a landlord or merchant and they’ll probably talk to me. When I try to contact most large companies about one of their stores, I’m lucky if I get a canned response a week later
Grand Rapids Business Journal
Restaurant and small business owners lean on Hispanic chamber program for guidance, growth and expansion.
Courtesy Transformando West Michigan
After taking a break during the craziness that was 2020, Transformando West Michigan returned this year with a new round of classes for its participants.
The business training program founded and led by the West Michigan Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and underwritten this time around by Bank of America and Huntington Bank will graduate its spring 2021 cohort which began meeting virtually on Feb. 1 on April 26.
The Hispanic chamber’s Ana Jose, program manager, and Yesenia Bernal, business consultant, recently spoke to the Business Journal about this year’s iteration of the program, along with four of the 18 Latinx business participants: Paola Mendivil, co-owner of El Granjero Mexican Grill in Grand Rapids; Gricelda Mata, owner of Lindo Mexico Restaurant in Wyoming; Ismael Abreu, owner of Ismael Abreu Ag
Comings & Goings: Businesses feeling absence of UCD students
The
ASUCD Coffee House closed indefinitely on Friday. Noting a lack of business, its management said the CoHo will remain shuttered at least through winter quarter.
In a Jan. 14 statement, Darin Schluep, longtime director of Associated Students Dining Services, said, “We will be utilizing this break in service to evaluate the past year’s operations, and identify key learnings and improvements to implement as part of the reopening strategy for the Coffee House and its satellite operations.”
Schluep said Dining Services management will determine by the end of winter quarter whether to extend the closure through spring and summer.
It’s clear one of the biggest stories of 2020 was the pandemic’s pummeling of small, local businesses. And just as the year wound down, downtown Davis suffered two blows: the closure of B & L Bike Shop and KetMoRee Thai Restaurant & Bar.
B & L Bike Shop, at 608 Third St., closed its door