Nik Rajkovic / news@whmi.com

The Howell Tavern, which offered WHMI a tour when it first opened in April 2026, is now closing, due to declining sales.

It’s located off Grand River next to Ace Hardware – where the old Firewood Grill was located, followed by The Smoke Doctor for a short time.

The owners of Howell Tavern posted a letter to the community on social media:

To our Howell Tavern customers,

First and foremost, thank you to everyone in our community who gave us the opportunity to try to build something special in Howell.

When we started this journey, our vision was simple: create a restaurant that people could call their own, a place with great food, cold drinks, friendly faces, and an atmosphere that would become a staple in the Howell community. We fought tooth and nail to get our doors open as quickly as possible because we couldn't wait to share that vision with all of you.

The road wasn't easy.

We faced challenge after challenge, overcame obstacles we never expected, met some truly incredible people, and unfortunately had to hire and part ways with a lot of staff along the way. Like many restaurants today, we learned that finding and keeping great people is one of the hardest parts of this industry.

I've always believed in being transparent, and I want to continue that today.

We heard it all.

We heard the building was "cursed." We heard there wasn't enough parking. We heard we were too expensive. We heard our ticket times were too long. We heard our food was some of the best people had eaten. We also heard that some people didn't care for it.

The truth is, no restaurant will ever make everyone happy every single time. Every person has different expectations, different tastes, and different opinions. That's simply part of the restaurant business, and we accepted that from day one.

What never changed was our commitment to improving. We listened to feedback, made changes, invested in better staff, refined our menu, improved our service, and continued pushing ourselves every day to become better than we were the day before.

Unfortunately, despite all of those efforts, the reality is that our sales have declined to a point where we can no longer continue operating.

With a heavy heart, we have made the incredibly difficult decision to close Howell Tavern.
This isn't just the closing of one restaurant. Over the past several months, we've watched multiple local restaurants close their doors, and we sincerely hope the remaining locally owned businesses can continue serving this community for years to come.

If there's one thing we hope people take away from our journey, it's this:

"Please support your local restaurants."

Restaurants are more than buildings that serve food. They're jobs, families, friendships, and gathering places for the community. Without consistent support, even businesses with passionate owners, talented staff, and great food simply cannot survive.

To everyone who supported us, encouraged us, shared our posts, brought in friends and family, left kind reviews, or simply chose to spend an evening with us, thank you. Your support meant more than you'll ever know.

While some people hoped we'd succeed and others hoped we'd fail, we're proud of what we built. We don't believe we failed because of a lack of effort. We gave this restaurant everything we had. We built an incredible team, created food we were proud to serve, and never stopped trying to improve.

Sometimes, despite your best efforts, it just isn't enough.

From the bottom of our hearts, thank you for allowing us to be a part of Howell, even for a short time.

Thank you, Howell.