BUSINESS

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RUTH LITTMANN

Special to The Jewish News

ar and restaurant
owner Mike Nash wa-
gers that his compul-
sion for risky business has
something to do with being
Jewish.
The successful partner in
six restaurant/bar enter-
prises, Mr. Nash grew up in
Jewish areas of Detroit and
Oak Park.
Mr. Nash, who resides in
West Bloomfield and attends
Temple Beth El, remembers
after-school walks home
along Dexter Road in Detroit.
En route, the young Mr. Nash
passed saloons with doors
cracked open just enough to
reveal smoky dark interiors.
Defying his parents, he often
peaked inside. For him, the
atmosphere held an aura of
mystery.
"I think it had to do with
coming from a Jewish home,"
he says, adding his father
never took a sip of alcohol.
"Jewish people never went to
saloons, so there was a mysti-
que of the unknown, a little
element of danger."
The mystique didn't dwin-
dle. At 45, he has channeled
, his penchant for the daring
and mysterious into bars of
his own, including Monterrey
(Royal Oak), Mr. B's Farm
(Novi), and four Mr. B's
establishments in Rochester,
Royal Oak, Troy and West
Bloomfield. The newest Mr.
B's opened last month on the
northwest corner of Maple
and Orchard Lake roads.
A self-admitted gambling
type, Mr. Nash concedes that
the bar scene did not initial-
ly spark his entrepreneurial
ambitions. After graduating
from Ferndale High School in
1963, he attended Wayne
-r, State University, where he
iE studied English and jour-
nalismwith the intention of
0
becoming
a teacher. His
>,
-a heart, however, was not with
g
.
a_ Ruth Littmann works as an
Robert Jackier, Mike Nash and Martin Tuchman discuss last minute details for the opening of their
assistant editor at Gale
Research Ina in Detroit.
new business venture.

B

54

FRIDAY, JUNE 14, 1991

his undergraduate studies. It
was in Miami Beach, Fla.,
where he pined to play the
horses by day and bartend at
night.
"I'd hate to have my
children read this, but it's
true," Mr. Nash says.
Midway through college,
Vietnam beckoned and Mr.
Nash got serious.
Fending off the draft with
two degrees and a certifica-
tion — a bachelor's in En-
glish, followed by a master's
and specialist's in education
— Mr. Nash began teaching
at. Redford Union High
School. While teaching, he
moonlighted with Hamilton
Miller Hudson and Fayne, a
travel company, for which he
sold and chaperoned vaca-
tions for high school students.
He worked for the firm un-
til 1983, leaving because he
couldn't tolerate traveling
with teens who used drugs on
the trips.
"It was life in its raw form,"
he says. "By the mid-1970s,
kids were into hallucinogens,
and things got really ugly."
Instead, Mr. Nash decided
to take another risk. He
entered the bar business. In
1976, he and a high school
companion had purchased a
small shot and beer joint —
Bob's Bar — on Fisher Hill in
downtown Pontiac across
from the Fiero Body plant.
"It was a real learning ex-
perience," Mr. Nash says,
recalling memories of biker
gangs and fistfights between
women. "Anything that could
have happened to us between
the space of those four walls
— happened to us. It was a
beautiful little prep school for
people wanting to get involv-
ed in our business."
When times got tough for
the automobile industry in
the late 1970s, the body plant
at Fisher Hill began to falter,
and Mr. Nash responded by
selling Bob's Bar. Riveting his
attention to an incipient ven-
ture in Rochester, the en-
trepreneur embarked upon
his first success.
Before selling Bob's Bar, Mr.
Nash had pooled paltry bank

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