![]() ![]() I was a finance major and a business major. ![]() How has your undergraduate degree influenced your way of working? But I like to be in Detroit, I like to be part of that part of the fabric of each neighborhood, which is what we try to do by kind of locating our properties all over. I said, I’ve never opened another bar outside of Detroit - except now, the one that’s six hours away in Northport. Now, I just really enjoy opening new properties, opening new kinds of hospitality experiences. And so that was certainly the motivation for bringing Sugar House in Detroit. People are eating well and now they’re just used to a better standard. Nobody’s ever gonna get sick of really great hospitality and really great drinks. A lot of people, when I was opening Sugar House 10 years ago, said, “don’t you think that this cocktail thing is a trend?” I don’t. Fine drinking is not either, so I don’t think it’s going to go anywhere. I think that people have realized that fine dining is not a fad. What’s the inspiration behind the Detroit Optimist Society: And obviously my version of retiring is buying a bar. My wife and I have been going there for years and I have good friends that live there. It’s nine, unless you include the Garage in Northport that’s number 10. How many bars and restaurants are you operating right now? For 10 years I went back and forth between Chicago and Detroit doing various TV show things and then trading, But I didn’t really want to go back to trading, I had a bit of money from the show, so I bought the bar that Sugar House was in and built it out. My brother and I built motorcycles on a TV show called Motor City motors. Ten years on, I found myself going back to Detroit. I said, If I ever opened a bar, I would want to have a place like this. They make really great craft cocktails, and then I was hooked. I spent a lot of time in Chicago drinking at The Violet Hour, a classic amazing bar there. When I left Michigan, I was an options trader in Chicago. How did you decide you wanted to own a series of bars? We sat down with Kwiatkowski at Time Will Tell for a chat. Expanding from a single cocktail bar to nearly a dozen different concepts in the span of a decade, he says, was only possible because he has a team of talented and hard-working people with him for the ride. Kwiatkowski credits much of his success to business and marketing skills learned at U-M and, just as importantly, to finding the right people. Renovations on The Garage in Northport begin this summer. Kwiatkowski has also branched out with the recent purchase of a cherished bar in Northport on Michigan’s Leelanau Peninsula. Initially developed as an industrial center in the early decades of the 20th century, Milwaukee Junction now hosts a mix of rental units, condominiums and lofts in its historic brick building. The group’s newest addition, Time Will Tell, opened in March in one of the city’s hottest new restaurant destinations, Milwaukee Junction. If Kwiatkowski’s establishments have a signature, it is their ability to create a singular and immersive environment. Since then, he and his partners have expanded their bar empire to include Wright & Company, Honest (?) John’s, Mutiny Bar, Bad Luck Bar, The Peterboro, and Grandma Bob’s.Įach bar under the society’s umbrella provides a unique guest experience: tropical tiki at Mutiny Bar, elevated elegance at Bad Luck, and solid dive bar brunches at Honest (?) John’s. His first bar, The Sugar House, opened in Corktown in 2011 and was one of the city’s first craft cocktail establishments. As the founder and principal of the Detroit Optimist Society, Kwiatkowski (Ross BBA, 2000) took a non-traditional but savvy approach to restaurant entrepreneurship. ![]() If you’ve been to a craft cocktail bar in Detroit in the past 10 years, there’s a solid chance you’ve had a drink at one of Dave Kwiatkowski’s bars. How do you go from being the best to this? Sad to say we are 100% never coming back.Shake over ice, then strain into a cocktail glass. Still trying to defend this poor excuse for food. Then the manager refused to come up front, I go to the back and she was very rude. I honestly didn’t care as long as some of them tasted okay. I was shown one box that only had 1 weird looking wing but the bottom box was full of them. So I called and the manager was too busy so she kept relaying back and forth between the hostess. But with one bite I knew something was wrong with the chicken, it tasted rancid. We ordered 16 wings but about 5 of them looked really weird, the meat and skin separated and was completely dried out. So we were excited to order our favorite, the mutiny sauce. And we found our absolute favorite here at Mutiny. My partner and I are big wing fans, we have tried wings from just about every place around. ![]()
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