![]() Their greatest treasure is creating delicious food, hosting great events, and crafting inspired cocktails. They operate with the classic pirate desire to escape the norm, be free, and do what they love. I’d recommend something with corn syrup - that’s your Maize - and a blue agave tequila.Mutiny Pirate Bar And Island Grille is a unique restaurant wedding venue located in Elkridge, Maryland. If you could make a cocktail for the University of Michigan Detroit, what would it be? That’s the solution to everything: better marketing. The marketing, I feel like takes it another level of understanding. The finance background is all fine and it’s all important, but I can kind of figure it out. I didn’t take marketing seriously when I was an undergrad. The thing that I use the most now that I didn’t appreciate at the time is the marketing element. 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. Shake over ice, then strain into a cocktail glass. ![]()
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