By Jeremy W. Steele
Business Direct Weekly
The fledgling DMA Food Group of Portage hopes to buck that trend. The privately held company severed a business agreement struck a year ago with Columbus, Ohio-based Damon’s International Inc. — which operates nearly 150 Damon’s Grille restaurants nationwide — to build its own chain out of two reincarnated Jackson eateries.
Breaking the deal, which had given DMA exclusive rights to build 10 Damon’s restaurants in Michigan, meant the forfeiture of an $180,000 deposit to Damon’s, DMA President Mark S. Janes said.
It also meant DMA would face the potential pitfalls of the restaurant industry, which chews up some 80 percent of new businesses within three years, by itself.
“It’s risky, there’s no doubt about it,” Janes said.
This year, statewide restaurant sales are expected to reach $11.3 billion, a 3.9 percent increase from 2003, said Kristyn Sorensen, spokeswoman for the 4,500-member Michigan Restaurant Association. For the Lansing metropolitan area, sales reached $536.9 million in 2003, she said.
Increased competition is making it difficult for those restaurants to succeed, she said. There are about 200,000 restaurants in the state.
“While we continue to see an increase in sales, at the same time we have more and more restaurants entering the marketplace,” she said. “So that makes it that much more difficult for restaurants to bring in higher profits.”
But DMA isn’t at the table without utensils.
The company is using the reputations of Gilbert’s Steak House and The Parlour, two Jackson restaurants that fell upon hard times before closing, to build its own chain.
The Parlour, which DMA bought and reopened in 2002, touts a guest register of customers from across the world who stop in Jackson for ice cream. A second location, The Parlour on Campus, opened in East Lansing last year and a third is scheduled to open in Kalamazoo this fall. DMA expanded the restaurant’s fare to include sandwiches, burgers, fries and pizza.
Gilbert’s, which closed in 2003, will become the flagship for a string of upscale seafood and steak houses, which will bear the moniker of Gilbert & Blake’s Steak and Seafood Grille.
The first Gilbert & Blake’s will open in August at the site of the only Damon’s built by DMA. The existing $3-million restaurant in Ingham County’s Meridian Township is getting a $250,000 makeover.
A second restaurant is being planned for the Ann Arbor area, Janes said.
The Jackson Gilbert’s, which will maintain its name, is undergoing a $1-million restoration to open in October.
The Gilbert’s name gives DMA the credibility to start an upscale restaurant, Janes said.
“Damon’s was a working man’s, blue-collar concept, and these are an upscale concept,” he said. | 
