North Grove Brewers’ kitchen caught fire last Thursday morning, sending the restaurant - for the moment - out of business as it tries to pick up the pieces. The fire also did severe damage to the Book Nook & Java Shop, which shares a building with North Grove.
Fortunately, as no one was around when the fire began, there were no injuries.
The fire, as it happened, was documented on North Grove’s internal cameras. Co-owner Jason Jaekel said around 5 a.m. Thursday morning, a bag of towels used in the restaurant, recently laundered, caught fire, which engulfed the center of the North Grove kitchen. In an ironic twist of (relative) good fortune, the flames burst a city water line, and the water put the fire out and at least prevented further damage. The flames also burst a CO2 line, Jaekel said, which limited oxygen in the kitchen and further helped to tamp down the fire.
It was the water spilling out from under one of the doors, though, that first caught Jaekel’s eye after dropping his kids off at school and coming to the brewery at about 8:45 a.m. Thursday. First believing a pipe had burst somewhere else and sent water into the brewery, he soon saw the worse news. Only after racing in to shut the brewery’s water off did Jaekel get a chance to take stock of the damage, which was severe.
“The kitchen is completely destroyed,” Jaekel said. “The heat caused all the piping and PVC in there to melt. The refrigerators still work, but the power was cut to a couple of them due to the fire, because they hit the lights in the ceiling and caused the breakers to trip. It’s weird, because some things are completely fine and others are melted. It’s weird how the fire touched some things, but not paper products four feet away...but the trash cans went up.”
Book Nook owners Andrew and Brooke Kuharevicz discovered the situation around the same time Jaekel did. Brooke normally opens the store Thursday mornings, and when she opened the door and smoke came billowing out, she thought their own business was on fire. The heat and smoke was such that it had come through into the Book Nook, wreaking havoc on the store.
“The fire was so hot, it destroyed pretty much anything that was around where the fire was,” Andrew Kuharevicz said. “It wasn’t just smoke damage, but heat damage too. Our deli case and a bunch of other appliances were destroyed. Once it was extinguished, the soot (still) covered everything. The front of the store was saved a bit, but our men’s bathroom was completely black (with smoke). It’s still closed and you can’t go in there. Our conference room, where book clubs meet, is destroyed, and it’s now a staging room for our loss, which is several hundred thousand dollars.”
Luckily for the Book Nook, through significant work by staff and volunteers, it was at least able to return to limited business Friday, with a health department inspection coming back clean.
“(The inspector) went in and touched every single surface in the living and dining room, and he was amazed that we pulled it off,” Kuharevicz said, noting he and his wife have put in 15-20 hour days to clean things up.
It is, however, a long road back to fully normal for the Book Nook. The shop has to purchase the ingredients necessary to serve its menu of food and drink items. Novelty items the store sells, such as tablecloths, t-shirts, dish rags and puppets, have such an odor of smoke on them that they’re unsellable, and the entire inventory of books needs to be looked over and likely cleaned. Kuharevicz said he hopes to have things back as they were in three or four weeks. In the meantime, by request from customers, the store launched a GoFundMe, which at press time had raised just over $3,000 of a goal of $31,000 to help fund items not covered by insurance, such as payroll and the purchase of new appliances.
That road is even longer for North Grove. There is no strict timeline for the brewery’s reopening yet as Complete Restoration out of Muskegon works on getting the restaurant back together. Jaekel, though, assured the public it plans to reopen once that’s possible; he hopes it will be within a month or two.
“Everyone wants to help, but we have to let the professionals deal with it,” Jaekel said. “We’d love to get a bunch of volunteers together to clean, but the soot can be dangerous to breathe in. We don’t want anyone getting sick later on.”
In the meantime, Jaekel has been working at his other restaurant - the Dog n’ Suds food cart, which he and wife Misty co-own. He said a couple of brewery employees have been transferred to the food cart to keep them working, and the brewery is working to help other employees collect unemployment funds while shifts are unavailable at North Grove.
There are several things for North Grove to juggle while waiting to reopen - the purchase of new kitchen equipment, certainly, and considering tweaks it may not have had time to think about had day-to-day operations continued as normal. Jaekel said the brewery will consider opening its outdoor beer garden if it can make it work. That, too, is contingent on other factors; there’s a limited quantity of available beer, and the damaged equipment means the brewery may need to figure out a way to brew offsite. Plans to do that are up in the air due to regulatory hurdles and a desire not to get in the way of other local breweries that need to make beer as well.
One thing that heartens Jaekel is the response from the community. Within a couple of days of the fire, several businesses had taken to Facebook to encourage local residents to patronize the Dog n’ Suds cart in support of North Grove. Sawyers Brewing, located just across the street from the food cart, offered a free drink to customers who came in with a Dog n’ Suds meal Friday night. Gnarly Heifer also encouraged patronage of the food cart.
“The community support is amazing right now,” Jaekel said. “We’ve been trying to be on Facebook to thank everyone. You see it and you’re so thankful you live in such a great community that’s willing to support and come out and help. I really appreciate a lot of the different businesses in the area.
“It shows it’s about more than just making money; it’s about making a place you’re proud to call home and a place where you feel welcomed as a business.”
Kuharevicz agreed, saying he’s lived in big cities and feels a closer kinship in the White Lake area.
“You don’t get that kind of help...all the time,” Kuharevicz said. “If your business burns down (in a big city), you’re kind of on your own. White Lake is a great area.”
North Grove has proven to be a resilient business in just four-plus years; before it had even opened, Jaekel said, there had been a flood there, and of course only two months after opening came the COVID-19 pandemic, forcing it from in-person business for a significant period. He joked that hopefully this third obstacle proves to be the last major one.
“Hopefully that’s it and there aren’t more bumps,” Jaekel said.
