Downtown Market scores second full-service restaurant with Social Kitchen

After enormous success in 2012 opening his first location in Birmingham, near Detroit, Zack Sklar has announced the opening of a second Social Kitchen & Bar at the Grand Rapids Downtown Market, expected to create anywhere between 50-70 full-time and 100 part-time jobs between the restaurant and its catering company, Cutting Edge Cuisine. 

"There's this contagious excitement and pride that's so undeniable, at Downtown Market and in Grand Rapids both," Sklar said. "It's the vendors. It's the pride in the city. It's the growth that's happened in the last decade. This is such a great space to be a part of, but the community of people is what really sold me, and sold us as a company." 

Social Kitchen & Bar is touted as accessible, everyday comfort food and is not the first brand under Sklar's past ventures, which include the Mexican restaurant & tequila bar Mex in Birmingham and Beau's in Bloomfield. 

"With Social coming to Grand Rapids, it's the first time I've expanded an already successful concept," Sklar says. "But now we're doing it with so much more structure and intention than we did the first time. I'm so excited to do this, because I think it’s really going to take off. We're going to hit the ground running in a way we didn't the first time. This is a first for us, even though it's not our first restaurant or our first Social. So it's going to be cool and unique."

Construction on the Social Kitchen & Bar will begin this summer, with the restaurant expected to open to the public in August. 

For more information, visit www.downtownmarketgr.com.

Written by Anya Zentmeyer
Images courtesy of Zack Sklar