Machus bucks tradition with new home-style grill

Nation's Restaurant News, Jan 13, 1992 by Carolyn Walkup

BIRMINGHAM, Mich. -- Machus Restaurants & Pastry Shops, in operation since 1933, has departed from tradition to open a home-style grill on the University of Michigan campus in Ann Arbor.

"We are trying to update our company," explained Robert Machus, who is president of the company. "We may adapt some of the newer items and lower price points from the A-Squared Grill [to other restaurants]."

The grill, which has a dinner check average of $22 and first-year projected sales of $2 million, is a casual dinner-house, rather than a fine-dining operation like the flagship Machus Red Fox, which has a $40 average.

A-Squared Grill is located in the Campus Inn, replacing a more formal restaurant. "We are marketing the restaurant as a separate entity from the hotel," Machus said.

Nor is the grill aimed at a clientele of college students. Rather, it is intended to appeal to college faculty and administration as well as campus visitors staying at the inn or elsewhere.

Collections of Ann Arbor memorabilia give the grill a college-town atmosphere. "We've put together a neighborhood-watering-hole-type restaurant with good, honest food prepared simply and quickly," Machus observed.

Among the house specialties are such dishes as a California Cuisinart salad; a square French pizza filled with spinach, wild mushrooms and tomatoes or shrimp, peppers and tomoatoes; and a fish stew, a seafood gumbo with shrimp, scallops and salmon on top of red beans and rice.

Other dishes include hearty steak vegetable soup; buckeye blues, a green chili stew; chicken pot pie with steamed vegetables; center-cut pork chops with mashes potatoes; sauteed veal liver with Michigan apples and mashes potatoes; and pan-fried pickerel with red beans and rice.

Dinner entrees are priced from $5.95 to $14.95.

The grill is the sixth restaurant in the Machus group, which also includes three pastry shops and management of all foodserive except concessions at the Palace, which is the home of the Detroit Pistons. Foodservice there includes a 245-seat restaurant called the Palace Grill.

Companywide sales in fiscal 1991 were about $14 million, remarked Machus, who hopes that figure will increase this year. Evidently the chances for improvement are good, Machus added, because the country is not at war and "there is nothing to watch on CNN."

Machus' restaurant sales increased last November for the first time in three months. Holiday party lookings were as good as those of a year ago, he observed. But clients were cutting back on spending by ordering less expensive dishes and smaller quantities of alcoholic beverages.

Sales at the three retail bakeries were up slightly,. Machus could not pinpoint the reason for the upturn in light of the fact that his baked goods are "not cheap and not trendy."

Since the local economy is driven by the auto industry, Machus noted, any upswing depends on improvements there. "I am concerned; I am hoping we are still here and have all of our restaurants operating," he said as he looked ahead to another year.

Machus has no expansion plans for the year because of the uncertain economy. "I think growth opportunities may come in the bakery area, but we won't look at that till after '92," he explained.

Instead of expanding, the company is trying to increase business at its existing restaurants and bakeries. "Everybody has to have a better product, and you have to work harder," Machus concluded.