Struggling economy contributes to Brother's Grill closing down

Making it in the restaurant business for a year marks a milestone — but it’s a bittersweet one for Brother’s Grill, 403 E. Grand River Ave., which officially closed Thursday after just more than one year of operation.

“I would have loved seeing people come in here as freshmen become sophomores and then graduate — that would have been awesome,” said Eric Gunn, owner of the burger and sandwich eatery.

The restaurant had been closed since Jan. 11, but at the time Gunn was unsure if it would reopen.

Brother’s Grill experienced solid lunch and dinner activity, but Gunn said it wasn’t enough.

“I haven’t been able to come up with an answer of why it didn’t work out,” Gunn said.

Restaurants require everything from kitchen equipment to labor, and have large operating costs, said Andy Deloney, Michigan Restaurant Association vice president of public affairs. He added that ballooning food costs have inflated overhead.

Michigan is an especially prohibitive environment for new restaurants because of the 2007 Michigan Business Tax, the tax’s 22 percent surcharge and minimum wage increases, Deloney said. In a state with the highest unemployment, greatest outward migration and slowest income growth, there is a smaller and poorer consumer base that has cut luxuries such as dining out, he said.

Kyle Boyd, a political science sophomore, said he ate at Brother’s Grill a few times. But with the restaurant business a highly competitive industry, not all will survive.

“From the economic standpoint, a lot of businesses are in trouble, and there’s a lot of food (in East Lansing), so obviously some of them are going to get hurt,” he said.

Gunn said although he doesn’t know how to remedy the situation, the economy has hit East Lansing hard — and all it takes is giving a short glance down Grand River Avenue to see that.

“In a sense, it’s the city’s problem because it looks horrible — businesses closed up and down the strip,” he said. “You want to see these places full, doing well, making money and prospering.”

Gunn’s restaurant won’t become part of a dreaded statistic — Deloney said about seven in 10 restaurants fail in their first year — but he said he will miss the laid-back, family atmosphere, the regulars for whom he would begin cooking as soon as they walked in and seeing the smiling satisfaction his food gave customers.

“I enjoyed my year here, and those are the things I remember,” he said.

Staff writer Andrew Krietz contributed to this report.