How small businesses thrive on Mackinac Island

By OLIVIA O’NEILL

Capital News Service

LANSING – It’s a beautiful fall day and you don’t hear any cars, just the clip-clop of horses. A horse-drawn carriage strolls down the Main Street bringing tourists to an age of simplicity and an old-world ambiance. 

“You can hear people talking and laughing and actually having conversations with one another,” said Tim Hygh, the executive director of the Mackinac Island Tourism Bureau who is retiring at the end of this tourism season.

“It’s an amazing enigma now,” he said.

Mackinac Island is a no-car, cycling and horse carriage island with an emphasis on locally owned business.

But then the carriage passes a sign with familiar white bold letters and a dark green mermaid on Main Street, bringing modern reality back.

Starbucks has been the only widely recognizable international name brand on the island for over a decade, making it an outlier in the changing mix of Mackinac Island businesses. 

According to the Mackinac Island Chamber of Commerce website, the island has a population of 470 year-round residents and 274 businesses. Among its largest industries are restaurants, gift shops and hospitality venues.

Crystal Reilly, a Michigan native from Clare County who now lives in Washington state, frequently returns to the state to visit family during the summer. 

“I was not expecting to see this on Mackinac Island. Starbucks? Huh,” Reilly posted on Facebook after a recent visit. “Only local businesses used to be there, so we were surprised to see this one right downtown.

“The Starbucks didn’t feel like it belonged,” she said.

Reilly compared her experience of visiting as an adult to the nostalgia from when she was in middle school and took field trips to Mackinac Island at the end of the eighth grade. 

“In the past, I remember there being a lot more of a tourist feel to the island,” Reilly said. “It was a trip back in time, something nostalgic and fun.

“It was also historical, as if preserved from the outside world. But this time it felt different,” she said.

Recent business additions to the island have been locally owned, including the Mackinac Island Cookie Co. co-owned by Kate Conlon and the Conlon family. 

Hygh said in the past 16 years he has been with the tourism bureau, adding another brand name to the island has “never come up.”

“Every once in a while, you know, you get this cute little outlier,” Hygh said. “I guess that’s what makes them different.”

Among the local coffee shops that compete with the popularity of Starbucks are Watercolor Cafe and Lucky Bean Coffee House.

“There are options for folks who want to go somewhere else,” he said. “There’s lots of options for such a small little place.”

There are also cafes in the hotels and resorts like Straight UP Coffee and Boxwood Coffeeshop and Cafe at the Mission Point Resort and Grand Coffee and Provisions at the Grand Hotel. 

But why have a recognizable name like Starbucks if the hallmark of Mackinac Island is its local, “only on Mackinac Island” approach? 

The Mackinac Island Starbucks Facebook page describes the business as “locally owned and operated with deep family roots on Mackinac Island.” The building is owned and operated by the Callewaert family business, which also owns the Island House Hotel and other local businesses. 

Todd Callewaert, the company’s CEO, said that his family’s involvement with Starbucks started in Chicago, with a few establishments in that city. 

When the opportunity came to take over an open building on Mackinac Island, Callewaert said Starbucks approached the company about collaboration and he suggested putting a Starbucks there.

“By being more recognizable, it has an advantage when [visitors and locals] see a familiar brand, and get this comfort,” Callewaert said.

The Starbucks corporate role is a partnership that gives guidance on what drinks and food to make, but ownership and operation of the Mackinac Island location is independent.

“[The Starbucks] supports my family and around 15 other employees,” Callewaert said. “It is good for the island, good for the community.”

Callewaert said he sees the island’s Starbucks as a contributor to the community rather than just a franchise name. 

And while the island is seen as iconic for its local feel, he said that franchise names are not a new concept on the island. 

Hygh said, “Historically, I have seen pictures of a Pizza Hut way back in the day, down at Mission Point. I’ve seen a Schwinn logo at a bike rental, and I know there was a Tasty Freeze on the island at some point.” 

“I guess you would call them outliers, and since [the Starbucks] is caffeine-oriented, I don’t think anybody has a problem with it,” he said.

Callewaert said the Starbucks made sense as part of his company’s business plan. And the establishment has adopted the island culture. 

Callewaert said that customers are a “mix of everything,” including locals. 

“There are locals that come every single day,” Callewaert said. “Some three times a day and [their order] is ready for them before they even get there. They can pick it right up and walk out.”

Although residents have access to the Starbucks during tourism season, they don’t have it year-round because it closes for the winter, like other tourism-based enterprises on the island.

They open back up in early May at the start of the summer tourism season.

Hygh said, “As long as we stick to all of our history and what got us here and be very consistent with that, the future’s bright because how many Mackinac Islands are out there?”