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When Michael LaPidus used to visit downtown La Grange roughly two decades ago, it was a very different place.
“When I said, ‘Coming to La Grange,’ I mean we’d go to the theater,” LaPidus said. “There wasn’t much else.”
Now, after a tax increment financing district and heavy investment from the village, downtown La Grange thrives with businesses, two of which LaPidus owns: Q BBQ and the Hotdog Company.
“If you build it, they will come,” said 34-year-old LaPidus. “Ten years later, they have come, they are coming and they will continue to come.”
There are 426 registered and licensed businesses in La Grange, which includes retail, service and professional services companies. Of those, 44 are restaurants, including sit-down, fast-casual and fast-food, said Community Development Director Pat Benjamin. Of those 44, Benjamin could think of three restaurant owners who owned two places each.
“It’s encouraging,” Benjamin said. “We were well positioned to recover quicker from the recession than other communities. Whenever you have the traffic counts we do, plus the charm of the old downtown, it’s extremely attractive to merchants.”
It’s particularly been attractive to the three restaurant owners who’ve decided to “double down” in La Grange, opening a second restaurant while their first continues to thrive.
LaPidus started in La Grange as an owner of a Roly Poly franchise restaurant, which was located in the same spot on La Grange Road where Q BBQ now stands. However, LaPidus decided to close Roly Poly after the sandwich wrap fad declined and costs began rising.
“As the economy started to dwindle, I knew America still needed to eat,” LaPidus said. “And barbecue is America’s original comfort food.”
With that in mind, LaPidus opened Q BBQ in October 2009 to a surprising level of success. Customers took to LaPidus’ brand of barbecue and word began spreading throughout the Chicagoland area, with people traveling from all over to La Grange.
“Our customers embraced us heavily,” LaPidus said. “To a point I never realized. They were committed to it as if it were their own.”
Because of the restaurant’s success, LaPidus and two other partners opened the Hotdog Company without hesitation behind Q BBQ more than a year ago.
“Reinvesting, doubling down, in La Grange is the smart thing to do,” LaPidus said. “If I had the chance to triple down, I’d do it.”
While some other restaurant owners have been critical about the number of restaurants in La Grange because of fear of saturating the market, LaPidus said it’s a good thing. His reasons for opening another restaurant weren’t to keep competition out, but to add a wider variety of cuisine to the area.
When Michael LaPidus used to visit downtown La Grange roughly two decades ago, it was a very different place.
“When I said, ‘Coming to La Grange,’ I mean we’d go to the theater,” LaPidus said. “There wasn’t much else.”
Now, after a tax increment financing district and heavy investment from the village, downtown La Grange thrives with businesses, two of which LaPidus owns: Q BBQ and the Hotdog Company.
“If you build it, they will come,” said 34-year-old LaPidus. “Ten years later, they have come, they are coming and they will continue to come.”
There are 426 registered and licensed businesses in La Grange, which includes retail, service and professional services companies. Of those, 44 are restaurants, including sit-down, fast-casual and fast-food, said Community Development Director Pat Benjamin. Of those 44, Benjamin could think of three restaurant owners who owned two places each.
“It’s encouraging,” Benjamin said. “We were well positioned to recover quicker from the recession than other communities. Whenever you have the traffic counts we do, plus the charm of the old downtown, it’s extremely attractive to merchants.”
It’s particularly been attractive to the three restaurant owners who’ve decided to “double down” in La Grange, opening a second restaurant while their first continues to thrive.
LaPidus started in La Grange as an owner of a Roly Poly franchise restaurant, which was located in the same spot on La Grange Road where Q BBQ now stands. However, LaPidus decided to close Roly Poly after the sandwich wrap fad declined and costs began rising.
“As the economy started to dwindle, I knew America still needed to eat,” LaPidus said. “And barbecue is America’s original comfort food.”
With that in mind, LaPidus opened Q BBQ in October 2009 to a surprising level of success. Customers took to LaPidus’ brand of barbecue and word began spreading throughout the Chicagoland area, with people traveling from all over to La Grange.
“Our customers embraced us heavily,” LaPidus said. “To a point I never realized. They were committed to it as if it were their own.”
Because of the restaurant’s success, LaPidus and two other partners opened the Hotdog Company without hesitation behind Q BBQ more than a year ago.
“Reinvesting, doubling down, in La Grange is the smart thing to do,” LaPidus said. “If I had the chance to triple down, I’d do it.”
While some other restaurant owners have been critical about the number of restaurants in La Grange because of fear of saturating the market, LaPidus said it’s a good thing. His reasons for opening another restaurant weren’t to keep competition out, but to add a wider variety of cuisine to the area.
“I am a firm believer that the more restaurants we have, the more synergy we have,” LaPidus said. “You can’t eat BBQ every night. You can’t eat Italian every night. But if we’re a destination for regional Chicago, that’s a sound business model.”
It’s a theory that others bought into.
Demetri Kopley, co-owner of Wild Monk — the first gastropub in La Grange — is married to Peggy Maglaris, whose father opened Prasino, a fine dining restaurant, in La Grange in 2009.
“It’s a great place to reinvest,” Kopley said. “La Grange is a destination town.”
Prasino opened two years after Kopley was diagnosed with cancer and a little less than a year after he went into remission. The idea for Prasino came after he and his wife couldn’t find a place in the area to eat that was organic and fresh, a diet he switched to after being treated for cancer.
“We couldn’t find a place in our area to find the type of food we were eating,” Kopley said. “We talked to my father-in-law, and that’s how the concept was born.”
The restaurant was such a success — people traveled from the city to La Grange for a chance to try Chef Riley Huddleston’s menu — that the family eventually opened a Prasino location in Chicago’s Wicker Park neighborhood.
Wild Monk opened in December in La Grange because of an opportunity to serve a niche demographic, mainly adults looking for a high-quality bar.
“This village could use a place where adults could get away,” Kopley said. “You almost have to go outside of La Grange to get something like it, and we wanted to keep people in La Grange.”
The theory mirrors LaPidus’ concept of having more of a good thing, such as a plethora of restaurants, to attract people to the area and keep them around for good.
“You have a lot of families moving into La Grange and these people are moving from the city,” LaPidus said. “What they have been used to is a wide array of restaurants, a lot of selection. They’re expecting that.”
Whether restaurants have sprung up because of more city dwellers moving to La Grange or more city residents have moved to La Grange because of the plethora of restaurants is unclear. However, the relationship appears to be symbiotic.
“People come here because they are seeing that they can go to a show, go to a store and have dinner,” LaPidus said. “This is a one-stop place.”
That’s why Tarnthip Kunupakarn, owner of Thipi Thai, and her husband, Antonio Soto, decided to open El Picante Mexican Grill two years ago.
Kunupakarn believed offering variety was not only a good business model for the individual owner, but for the village at large.
“People come here from all over,” Kunupakarn said. “It makes sense for us to give them more of a variety to choose from.”
