Grand RiverBrewery opens new location in Clawson

CLAWSON — A brand-new business has opened in the main downtown area of Clawson.

Grand River Brewery opened its doors on Dec. 8 at its new East 14 Mile Road location, on the corner with Main Street. The business began 10 years ago in Jackson and opened a second location in Marshall in 2018.

Bryce Davenport, chief operating officer, said Grand River Brewery selected Clawson for its newest location because it felt Clawson was an up-and-coming city that people were gravitating toward.

“Clawson fits into our kind of mindset in terms of we like coming to these little, smaller towns and just really being a part of the community,” Davenport said. “When we’ve been in Clawson and we’ve been around, the community is amazing. The people that are here are amazing. So we just want to provide them with a restaurant that they’re proud of and that is consistent for them, because we think that they deserve that.”

The opening of Grand River Brewery has been a year in the making since the closure of Pumachug. Davenport said that time was due to the business waiting on an approval from the Michigan Liquor Control Commission.

Clawson Downtown Development Authority Executive Director Joan Horton said it’s good to have this downtown location activated again after a yearlong wait, as well as the opening of another business nearby, Gus’ Snug Irish Pub.

“I think knowing that somebody was just ready to come in, it made (the wait for Grand River Brewery’s opening) a lot easier,” she said. “It’s a very viable location, and so just knowing that there was just somebody waiting, again, made it so much easier, but we do have a very, very strong restaurant base in downtown Clawson. So there were plenty of choices and Grand River Brewery and Gus’ Snug just brings another element to fill the gaps that we had with different kinds of food offerings, and so we’re very excited to have both of them.”

“It’s always nice when you get, especially with restaurant businesses, when you get a restaurant that already knows the business and can come in and hit the ground running because they know what they’re doing,” she continued.

Now that it’s officially opened, Grand River Brewery will move forward like any other business and hope to attain a strong clientele.

Davenport said the restaurant’s goal is to provide a great space for people to come in, relax and offer a menu that’s “very easy and not pretentious.”

“It’s things that are other classics on any menu that you could get: mac and cheese, a burger, a Reuben sandwich. They’re just comfort foods,” he said. “Our main focus is we just want to provide the best food possible and obviously the best service possible and not really make things difficult. A lot of restaurants try and do too much and they forget that most people are just kind of content with what they know, and we just want to take those and do it really well, and that’s really our goal.”