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A 60-year-old Detroit barbecue joint on the ups and downs of the restaurant business

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A 60-year-old Detroit barbecue joint on the ups and downs of the restaurant business

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In the heart of Detroit’s North End, Parks Old Style Bar-B-Q has borne witness to the neighborhood’s metamorphosis.

After 60 years in business, the family-owned barbecue joint has seen high density and pervasive vacancy in the neighborhood. It has seen foot traffic brought by plant workers at nearby factories and the late-night culture that came with it. Second-generation owner Rod Parks remembers the days hungry laborers would venture to Parks Old Style for slabs of pork ribs served with soft white bread as late as 2 a.m. at the end of overnight shifts.

And yet today, the takeout restaurant lurks in the shadows of glossier food and beverage establishments in a gentrifying neighborhood.

All good things come to the North End

There’s a rich culinary scene burgeoning in the North End.

The Detroit neighborhood between Woodward Avenue and Interstate 75, north of East Grand Boulevard, is anchored with Black-owned farms and restaurants that have been serving neighbors for decades, while a new generation of entrepreneurs are flocking to the area to bring a range of food and beverage concepts.

Business owners are opening fine dining restaurants, cafes, breakfast joints and big projects like the Detroit People’s Food Co-op, a community-owned grocery store. These endeavors are breathing new life into the shells of former businesses whose signs have faded and masonry patinaed amid years of abandon.

The culinary landscape in the North End is an extension of the growing dining scene to the west in New Center, with restaurants like The Kitchen whose chefs have ventured into the television cooking competition realm, winning contests that help put Detroit’s food scene on the map.

It’s an extension of Milwaukee Junction, where James Beard-recognized restaurants like Baobab Fare plate warm stews and serve spiced coffee made with chocolatey beans sourced from the owners’ native Burundi and award-winning craft cocktail bars like Kiesling pour the dirtiest martinis in town. It’s also an extension of the stunning Yemeni cuisine that juts up against it in Hamtramck to the east.

Challenges of doing business in Detroit

Three generations of the Parks family have been employed at the corner of Beaubien Boulevard and Custer Street since the barbecue joint opened in 1964.

Rod’s late father Edward Parks purchased the property at 500 Custer St., which would become the grounds for Parks Old Style Bar-B-Q. When he returned home after serving eight years in the U.S. Navy, Rod’s late brother Phillip joined the family business, and when Edward died in 2000, Phillip stepped in to take over the restaurant’s day-to-day operations. In 2002, when Phillip died of health issues at 55, Rod, then a serial entrepreneur working in security and in the insurance industry, followed in his brother’s footsteps to keep the legacy alive.

“The restaurant business wasn’t something that I intended to do forever and a day, but here I am, 60 years later,” Rod says. “The barbecue business has been good to the family, and we hope to keep moving along.”

Phillip and Rod’s children, the third generation of Parks Old Style employees, see the same value in the family business. Rod’s son, daughter and nephews all play a role in the restaurant as well as behind the scenes, handling finances and marketing tasks.  

Deep roots in the neighborhood, however, have not won the business favor with the city of Detroit.

You might expect a long-standing restaurant like Parks Old Style to have cemented a rapport with city officials, but as the North End has evolved in recent years, Rod says city support has only dwindled.

“I love Detroit — I can’t think of any place I’d rather be — but the city of Detroit is not small business-friendly. I don’t care what they say,” Rod says, citing increasing challenges with basic necessities, such as sanitation and regular inspections.

According to John Roach, spokesman for the city of Detroit, the city is working to develop a stronger support system for businesses like Parks Old Style.

“We certainly don’t want our business owners to feel they are not being supported,” Roach says in an email. “We understand that small businesses are the backbone of our city, especially those that stayed in the city when others were leaving.”

Roach says the city has developed resources such as the Detroit Economic Growth Corporation, which employs a team of business liaisons consisting of one representative for each council district of the city.

“It’s their job to assist business owners who may need support from various city departments so they don’t have to navigate city hall bureaucracy by themselves.” Roach says a newly appointed Business District Liaison for the North End neighborhood will connect with Rod to learn more about his concerns.

In the meantime, Rod has taken matters into his own hands. Inconsistent garbage removal at the restaurant eventually prompted him to seek service from a private company. The swap allowed for annual cost savings and more reliable, efficient service.

As president of the North End Milwaukee Junction Business District Association, Rod has been able to advocate for fellow area business owners with similar needs that he has come by over his many decades in business in the North End.

In many ways, Parks Old Style is deeply rooted in the neighborhood. In others, it’s rootbound.

Positioned next to Greater Phillips Temple A.O.H. Church of God, which owns the vacant lots that sit on either side of the restaurant, there are barriers to expansion of the business.   

“We’re not a soul food joint, we’re not a full-service restaurant, we’re a barbecue joint, no ifs ands or buts,” Rod says. In his eyes, the takeout model would lend well for drive-through service — which feels unfeasible for a landlocked business.  

Rod has explored the possibility of expansion into a secondary space, but says the cost of property in the North End and Detroit at large are now out of reach for the small, family-run business.

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“If I had to pay the rent that I hear these guys are paying, there really is no way,” he says.

The cost of keeping it simple in complex times

The simplicity of Parks Old Style Bar-B-Q adds to the expansion complications.

For customers, there’s an ease to the restaurant’s straightforward menu of recipes passed down from Rod’s parents. There are just a few meat options — barbecued pork and beef ribs or chicken slathered in a tangy, spicy sauce the color of fire, chewy rib tips and crispy wing dings — and a handful of Southern sides and desserts.

But the minimalistic approach at the back of house that was once suitable for the times has created parameters that have confined the restaurant’s growth in modern days.

In the 1960s, Edward Parks designed the operation around a 14-foot, built-in, wood- and coal-fired grill.

“It’s strictly a barbecue joint — we do not have a kitchen,” Rod says. “Everything that we do is done on a closed-in grill built right into the building.”

That handful of sides, he says, are cooked on hot plates.

Operating solely on this particular grill, which Rod says is as central to Parks Old Style’s recipes as the ingredients used, further limits the business’ ability to lease a property for a second location. Property owners frown upon the notion of carving holes into a roof for the proper ventilation of dust and ash emitted from fire embers, but Rod is uncompromising.

“It’s part of our heritage, our lineage,” he says. “There are machines out there, and some even cook with wood and charcoal, but they wouldn’t give the same flavor and texture as our built-in grill.”

Parks Old Style has, however, taken some steps to evolve with the times. In 2011, the team built an 18-foot trailer furnished with a stove, a flat-top fryer, refrigeration and a sink. The mobile kitchen allows the business to participate in Detroit’s vibrant festivals and meet the growing demand for food trucks sought after for special events.

Still, Rod finds it difficult to keep up with the times, namely within city limits.

Annual food festivals held at the Detroit riverfront, for example, require individual vendors to provide their own utilities — which comes at a cost.

“I used to do some events at the Riverfront, but it became so costly that doing business in Detroit is difficult,” Rod says. “It costs to get in and there are no amenities. I have to haul my own water, I have to bring a generator to run, whereas if I go out to Lake Orion, they have water hookups and they provide electricity so that I don’t have to run a generator all night. It just hasn’t become economically worthwhile for us to do certain events.”

And with dozens of food trucks and vendors crowded into one space, the bounty of options available for attendees to choose from lends little revenue for Parks Old Style to gain.

For an event that grosses sales of $1,500, Rod says he’d be fortunate to clear $200 after paying for staff, stock and the cost of utilities to participate.

An OG pitmaster on the G-word

This is the cost of gentrification. As newcomer entrepreneurs with bigger budgets enter Detroit’s dining realm, veteran business owners who have remained loyal to the city for decades often find themselves marginalized.

But beside every downside of redevelopment, Rod sees a benefit.

When the North End was largely vacant, he’d keep a weapon in his pocket after leaving the restaurant for his own protection. Today, he says, there are smiling faces riding bikes or going for jogs, the picture-perfect vision of urban renewal.

Once the sole restaurant operator in the neighborhood, Rod has now become friendly with his restaurateur neighbors.

With gentrification, he recognizes, comes a culture shift.

From the humble shack that has seen the waxing and waning of its surroundings, Rod has his eye on the shifting demographics of the North End. New neighbors are college students young enough to be his grandchildren and working adults with dietary habits that differ from the plant workers who stopped in all those years ago.

“It’s been many years since we could survive on the neighborhood. We don’t get a lot of neighborhood people.”

Weekly customers now stop in biweekly. Biweekly customers have turned monthly.  

“The people are there, the frequency isn’t,” he says.

Natural disasters

And then there are the natural challenges of the restaurant industry that hit mom-and-pop operations like Parks Old Style especially hard.

Rod is far from immune to staffing shortages and says he has decreased his workforce from 15 employees to nine — not by choice, but for an inability to attract and retain dedicated workers.

“People lost their desire to work for someone, particularly if they got into the gig industry,” he says. “Why work for me for eight hours a day when you can make the same money, if not more, and not have any overhead depending on what you’re doing?”

To continue a tradition his father started in the ’60s, Rod aims to hire North End residents and seeks out anti-recidivism programs to hire formerly incarcerated individuals looking for work in hospitality.

“My dad believed in giving people a second chance and where he could, he’d hire out of the neighborhood,” he says. “I find it so sad that (formerly incarcerated people) have such a hard time finding work, because most of these guys have done something in their youth, but they’ve gone through the system and served their time.”

Parks Old Style is hard hit by the impact of inflation and the impending bump in minimum wage, which, Rod says, could very well break the business.

“We are going to price ourselves out of business and that’s the truth.”

Such factors coerce restaurateurs like Rod into raising menu prices, contributing to the decrease in clientele who don’t see the value in high-priced meals — even meals they’ve loved for years, from establishments they’ve frequented for years.

“In my own heart and mind, I cannot see paying $41 and change for 12 bones of pork ribs,” he says of the current cost of a rack of ribs at Parks Old Style.  

Rod has been on the roller coaster ride of restaurant ownership and experienced its hardships for decades.

He witnessed the riots, the city’s bankruptcy, the recession, the events of Sept. 11, and most recently, COVID-19.

What has saved the business over the years is one sound decision made by his father Edward when he opened the restaurant six decades ago — the decision to purchase the property on that coveted spot in the North End.

“The truth is, if we didn’t own that damn building, we would’ve been out of business,” Rod says.

Parks Old Style is not only a microcosm of a longtime business trying to find its way in a rapidly evolving Detroit neighborhood, it also represents a dying breed of family-owned businesses on their last leg of family members losing interest — and faith — in the hospitality industry.

The business that has put his children through college, is losing the next generation to more sustainable and attractive careers in law and entertainment — a reality that Rod is equally proud of and saddened by.

“I would like to see the legacy move forward,” he says, “but the honest to goodness fact is, when my son, Rod Jr. hangs up his apron, the business will get sold or closed.”

Parks Old Style Bar-B-Q, 7444 Beaubien Blvd., Detroit. 313-873-7444

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