5:59 AM, July 14, 2013 |

In Norm and Bonnie LePageʼs long marriage and career, theyʼve

owned more than 20 restaurants and food businesses, from their

first doughnut shop in Dearborn to Birminghamʼs stylish Big Rock

Chop House, one of the cityʼs most popular destinations.

“There are way too many to remember,” Norm LePage said last

week, as he and his wife talked about their 42 years in the risky

restaurant business — and their most ambitious project yet, set to

open Thursday.

At an age when most couples are enjoying retirement, they and

their longtime friends and business partners Ray and Mary

Nicholson are poised to open a $3 million-$5 million state-of-the-art

craft brewery, with Big Rockʼs award-winning brew master Dan

Rogers in charge of production, distribution and operations.

The 12,000-square-foot Griffin Claw Brewing Co. at 575 S. Eton

also includes a taproom-restaurant, outdoor German-style

biergarten with fire pit, cocktail bar, distillery and outdoor patio. Now

a sleek, modern structure, the brewhouse will eventually be

covered in ivy, “so it will look like it has been here 100 years … like

Longtime life and business partners craft microbrewery inBirmingham

By SylviaRector

Detroit FreePress StaffWriter

FILED UNDER

Business

Michigan Business

Dearborn

the breweries in Germany,” says Bonnie

LePage.

She and Mary Nicholson own the brewery;

they also are partners and co-owners, with

their husbands, of Big Rock, its cigar bar and

its Reserve special-events center, all just a

few blocks from Griffin Claw in the

Birmingham Rail District. The husbands

cannot own the brewery because they

already have regular liquor licenses.

LePage never dreamed she would own a

full-scale brewery, much less plunge into the

trendy, arcane world of craft beer at age 69.

But the awards Rogers began winning for

Big Rockʼs IPAs finally got the attention of

her husband, 72, whom she calls “the

ultimate risk-taker entrepreneur.”

IPAs, or India Pale Ales, are among the most

popular craft beers in the country. And

Rogers — brewing only 600 to 700 barrels of

beer a year at the restaurant — beat out 103

other entrants to win a gold medal for Normʼs

Raggedy Ass IPA at the 2010 World Beer

Cup competition in Denver.

“I didnʼt realize it was such a huge deal until I

saw Miller Beer advertising that they won a

gold cup at the same thing for their regular

beer,” Norm LePage said. “Then we started

getting calls from people from other states

who wanted to buy our beer, but our license

was a brewpub. All we could do was serve it

at Big Rock.”

When the West Bloomfield couple began

thinking about building a brewery so they

could distribute it, they considered just

relocating Big Rockʼs brewing equipment, but

they had so much interest from distributors,

they decided to go bigger and start from

scratch with new equipment.

Powers Distributing, which handles

MillerCoors products and 79 other suppliers,

will distribute Griffin Claw across the state,

buying the breweryʼs entire first yearʼs

production except for what the Claw taproom

sells, he said.

Even before opening, the brewery has

ordered enough additional fermenters to

Bonnie and Norm LePage have been part of such

ventures as Chicken Joy broaster shops, the Townsend

Hotel and Big Rock Chop House in Birmingham. The

Griffin Claw Brewing Co. opens Thursday. / Andre J.

Jackson/Detroit Free Press

Griffen Claw Brewing Co. in Birmingham is a $3

million-$5 million state-of-the-art craft brewery, with Big

Rock Chop House's brew master Dan Rogers in charge

of operations. / Andre J. Jackson/Detroit Free Press

This grilled-cheese sandwich will come with spiced

applewood bacon.

2 of 6 7/15/13 12:59 PM

double its original planned capacity to 15,000

barrels a year, which is still small by brewery

standards and less than Powers would like to

buy, Norm LePage said.

Powersʼ chief operating officer, Gary

Thompson, isnʼt concerned about whether

people will buy the beer. The problem with

craft beer isnʼt demand — itʼs supply. “At this

point in time, thereʼs not enough to go

around,” he says.

Demand grows

Indeed, Griffin Claw is opening at a time

when Americaʼs thirst for craft beer has

never been greater and breweries are

opening at record rates. Michigan, ranked

fifth in the country with 140-plus craft

breweries, also has one of the fastest-

growing brewing industries. “New ones are

opening every week,” says Scott Graham,

executive director of the Michigan Brewers Guild. “We canʼt keep

up with them.”

The new Birmingham facility includes several pieces of custom

equipment not previously used in small breweries, says Rogers.

One is its high-tech, high-efficiency filtering system, made by a

company whose industrial units are used worldwide and cost $10

million or more. But Griffin Clawʼs, which cost $150,000, is “the first

small unit in the world, so we expect people will be coming from all

over to see it,” Rogers says.

“It was a big decision to build a brewery,” says Bonnie LePage, who

has been her husbandʼs sleeves-rolled-up partner in everything

from Chicken Joy broaster shops to the launch of Birminghamʼs

Townsend Hotel to the evolution of Big Rock into a stylish,

high-profile restaurant.

Their first business was much less glamorous. They were living in

Germany in 1971 but wanted to come home, so Norm LePage

wrote his father-in-law and asked him to find a business they could

afford with their small savings. He ended up with Southern Creme

doughnuts in Dearborn, working nights to make the doughnuts that

his father-in-law sold to Ford Rouge plant workers along with

sandwiches and drinks.

“I discovered the doughnut business wasnʼt for me,” LePage says,

so he decided to try restaurants. They bought a fine-dining place in

Walled Lake called the Squireʼs Table, but that didnʼt feel quite right,

either.

“After about a year, there I was in the middle of Walled Lake in a

tuxedo and ruffled shirt, flipping Caesar salads, and somehow it just

didnʼt go with the community,” LePage says. So they closed,

remodeled and reopened as Nifty Normanʼs with a casual menu

and a killer burger. “That place rocked and rolled every night ever

after that,” he says.

With Niftyʼs going strong, they branched out, opening numerous

Nuggetʼs breakfast spots, Dawn Donuts shops, bagel shops and

Chicken Joy places over the next several years from Redford

Township to Union Lake.

Bonnie LePage was still running Niftyʼs, a role that wasnʼt always

comfortable for the conservative former schoolteacher. “That was in

the days when waitresses wore short sexy dresses with little

aprons,” she says. And on Wednesdays there were lingerie fashion

shows “with cheesy models walking around” that brought in

businessmen, she says. “And Iʼm saying to Norman, ʻI didnʼt sign up

for this!ʼ ”

Success started small

But she was also running a thriving bar and bat mitzvah party room

in their basement lounge, called the Mushroom Cellar — and that

led to their first big break in business.

Prominent Birmingham developer Eric Lutz attended one of the

parties and was so impressed with the coupleʼs success in such an

unlikely spot that he invited them to open a restaurant in the old

Birmingham train station, which he and developer Tony Brown had

just bought. The result was Normʼs Eton Street Station, opened in

1984 and converted to the upscale Big Rock in 1997.

Their partnership with Lutz and Brown also got them their next offer,

to be minority partners and do the food at the Townsend Hotel,

which Brown was building. Bonnie LePage was asked to fill in as

temporary manager before it opened, “and four years later, she was

still running the hotel,” Norm LePage says. “She was the one who

put it on the map.” She succeeded in having the Townsend

accepted by the Preferred Hotel Group, which represents top

destinations all over the world.

Running the Townsend was “an amazing job,” she says. “This was

my chance to shine, to show who I was. … It was a dream.”

The LePagesʼ other projects have included two mammoth

restaurants they were recruited to open in the old Indianapolis train

station and the Mac-Ray Harbor restaurant in Harrison Township,

where they met and became partners with the Nicholsons.

Thrill of the chase

Griffin Claw isnʼt something Bonnie LePage had counted on at this

stage. She had been hoping to do some long-delayed redecorating

at home. “My kitchen is so old, I have one of those brown stoves,”

she says. But business needs have always come first for them, so

the redecorating will have to wait.

“I was talking to someone the other day, and they said, ʻWhy are

you doing this?ʼ And I said, ʻI am married to the ultimate risk-taker

entrepreneur.ʼ … It was never about the money for Norm. Itʼs about

the thrill of the chase. Itʼs the project. If it was about the money,

weʼd be living this lavish lifestyle, but itʼs all here — and there,” she

says, pointing around the Big Rock dining room.

“This is a partnership of a real, true, balls-to-the-wall kind of

entrepreneur, and a wife whoʼs going like this every day,” she said,

circling her hands wildly over her head. “Sometimes it overwhelms

me.” But at the same time, she said, “there arenʼt a lot of husbands

and wives who could work together all these years.”

Their daughter, Nicole, lives in New York and isnʼt interested in the

restaurant business, but their son, Scott, owns three, including

Clubhouse BFD in Rochester.

“I want Scott to take our position at the brewery and perhaps at Big

Rock in the next two years,” says Norm LePage. “I donʼt ever want

to retire, and I donʼt think Bonnie does, but perhaps we could be a

support system for him.”

So is Griffin Claw his last project? “Oh, no. Weʼre already looking at

other things coming our way and just making sure itʼs the right

situation,” he says.

The brown kitchen stove may have to last a little longer.

Contact Sylvia Rector: 313-222-5026 and srector@freepress.com.

Follow her on Twitter @SylviaRector.