Local Businesses Change Hands

Three well-known area businesses are changing hands, with the Harbor Café in Elk Rapids set to become a new village bookstore, long-time archery pro shop Gauthier’s Archery under new ownership, and downtown Traverse City’s 123 Speakeasy listed on the market.

Karen Simpson, owner of Cellar 152 and the Elk Rapids General Store, has purchased the Harbor Café building at 129 River Street from Kay Clark. The property sold for $239,900, according to Realtor.com. Clark bought the café 11 years ago, according to her daughter Kelly Jacobs, who worked as a waitress in the restaurant. Jacobs’ brother and Clark’s son, Chad Clark, also worked in the kitchen. “At this time in my mom’s life, it’s time to retire,” says Jacobs of the decision to bring the family-run business to a close. “She has been thinking about retirement for the last few years, but we really loved the place and our customers. So we kept putting it off. Being as we thought it would take a few years to sell, we thought we better at least get it listed. To our surprise, it actually sold really quickly.”

Simpson, who recently sold the building that houses Bayfront Beach and Bike to that company’s owners, says the timing was fortuitous to be able to turn around and acquire the Harbor Café building. “I’ve always wanted to open a bookshop,” she says. “It’s been a dream of mine for a long time, and a lot of people have said we need a bookshop in town. I plan to put in a bookstore in that space and have coffee and tea and a cozy place for people to come and read.”

Simpson says the as-yet-unnamed bookstore will have a general selection of fiction and nonfiction, but she notes she wants to specialize in “kids and teen books, coffee table books, and food books. That’s one of my passions as well.” The former café building will undergo a complete renovation over the winter ahead of a targeted spring opening. “We’re basically ripping everything out, except we will keep a small kitchen area for the future,” she says. “We’re going to expand back several feet to make the room bigger. There will be a lot of mechanical upgrades. The inside will be completely redone; I want to do a mural on the ceiling and have a cozy window seat area.”

In Traverse City, Gauthier’s Archery – the oldest continuously-running archery-only pro shop in the state of Michigan – is under new ownership after founder Jim Gauthier decided to retire after 41 years in business. Gauthier notes he’s been working in retail since he was fresh out of high school, at one point running the former Field and Stream store on State Street in Traverse City before launching his archery business in the basement of the Amical building on Front Street in 1980. A decade later, he built his own building at 1788 M-37 South and has been there ever since.

In recent years, Gauthier says he began to think about retirement as crossbows became increasingly high-tech and sophisticated. “The biggest thing was the technology was starting to pass me by,” he admits. “They’ve gotten so technical. I thought I’d let somebody else with more enthusiasm take over.” Gauthier put the business up for sale on a “soft basis” and attracted interest from several potential buyers. However, he says most of those buyers didn’t want his store but rather his exclusive product lines – one of the key assets that has allowed Gauthier to stay competitive as big-box stores moved in over the years. Then Greg McDonald, an enthusiast of the sport and a local tanning salon owner, came into the picture.

“Greg wanted to carry on my legacy, and his passion was really there,” says Gauthier. “He’s also a veteran, which is really cool. I’ve been really impressed with what I’ve seen from him.” Gauthier and McDonald went through several months of negotiations before finalizing a deal this summer for McDonald to purchase the business. Since then, Gauthier has actively assisted with the ownership transition and says he’s been available to answer questions or offer assistance whenever McDonald needs. Though the decision to sell the company was a bittersweet one for Gauthier, he says he’s already enjoying the fruits of retirement – notably, actually being out in the woods during hunting season instead of stuck behind a counter.

“I can now do early season hunts, ride my bike, travel with my wife,” he says. Being out in the field for archery season this year was especially rewarding, he says. “I just got back from Alberta and 10 days of hunting up there. It was just awesome.” Gauthier adds that even with a decline in the number of hunters in Michigan, archery sales are still thriving. While many kids are increasingly more interested in playing video games or using their phones indoors than hunting outside, Gauthier says that when they’re exposed to the sport, they fall in love. “We just have to expose kids to it,” he says. “It’s part of our heritage. The kids who come up in it pass it along to their kids, so that’s our hope: that it’ll continue to be passed on to kids down the road.”

Another Traverse City business could also soon be under new ownership. The owners of 123 Speakeasy on West Front Street in downtown Traverse City (pictured) have just put the bar for sale on the market. The business is listed for $220,000 and includes the “antique bar, furnishings, complete build-out, liquor license, inventory (subject to MLCC approval), kitchen equipment, and a below market lease through January 2027,” according to the listing.

Co-owner and general manager Taylor Keefe says staffing challenges ultimately doomed the business, which tried to reopen its doors this fall after being closed since the start of the pandemic. “The speakeasy is completely indoors, no outdoor seating, and we didn’t want to put any of our staff at risk,” he says of the speakeasy’s year-plus closure. “We figured we’d ride out the storm.” When vaccines became available, Keefe says the owners tried to reopen, but by that point many staff had found other positions or left the industry. “We had one bartender left,” he says. “We could not find a cook. We had to work around really tight schedules and were very understaffed. If a single person called out, we had to close.”

Because 123 Speakeasy was on a reservation-only system and operating exclusively on weekends, having to close – a scenario that occurred multiple times this fall – meant having to call 100-200 people to notify them of the cancellation and losing all potential revenues for that week. Between those challenges, spending an estimated 20-25 hours a week just on trying to recruit staff, and running into rising labor and supply costs, Keefe says the company’s business model “just stopped working.”

“We decided it was time to hopefully find someone else who might have a different business model or strategy,” he says. “It’s turnkey, and we’d love to see it continue in some form. But the face of hospitality has changed radically in the last two years. So we can’t expect exactly what it will be next.”