If your travels take you to Southeast Michigan and you typically search for a familiar face for lunch or dinner, the party is over in Motown for the Papa Vino’s flag. Mishawaka-based Quality Dining has closed three Detroit area Papa Vino restaurants after their 20-year leases expired on all three last week.
Gone are the Papa Vino’s restaurants in Pontiac, Northville and Troy. The St. Joseph restaurant, which recently celebrated a milestone birthday locally, is not affected by the closures in Detroit at all, and the St. Joe site is here to stay. The other remaining Papa Vino site is at home-base in Mishawaka, and there is still a forerunner to the brand, called Spageddies in Lafayette, Indiana.
Quality Dining also owns and operates 45 Chili’s Grill & Bar sites including the one in St. Joseph, and nearly 160 Burger King restaurants including those throughout Michigan’s Great Southwest and Northwest Indiana.
John Firth is Quality Dining’s President, General Counsel & Secretary, and he tells Crain’s Detroit Business his company reassessed whether it would be “financially viable” to continue the brand in metro Detroit, however, since remaining on the scene in that area would dictate remodeling updates of all three locations, the math just didn’t work out.
Firth was quoted by Crain’s reporter Annalise Frank as saying, “It’s been a good market for us…we just couldn’t rationalize committing” to ongoing operations.
The photo accompanying this story on Moody on the Market.com is of the St. Joseph Papa Vino’s, which will continue to operate in SW Michigan and is not directly impacted by the closures in Detroit.
