Longtime locals may recall that Zingerman’s Roadhouse, the Palm Palace, and the site of the southside Red Roof Inn are all former locations of Bill Knapp’s, a family-owned restaurant chain based in Battle Creek from 1948 to 2002.

“The first time I ever ate dinner with my future in-laws, it was at a Bill Knapp’s restaurant,” recalls Marty Carrier (left). He now owns the bygone chain’s intellectual property and wholesales Knapp’s baked goods to supermarkets in thirty states. Michael Greene runs the new retail side. | Photo: J. Adrian Wylie

Generations would convene at these freeway-handy sites for an old-fashioned lunch or dinner, the kids choosing among meals named for zoo animals. If it was someone’s birthday, celebrants would share a chocolate cake—tall, round, frosted, and free.

“The first time I ever ate dinner with my future in-laws, it was at a Bill Knapp’s restaurant,” recalls Marty Carrier, whose company now owns the venerable brand and its time-tested recipes. His professional interest began at Awrey’s, the commercial bakery his grandfather helped found, which was stuck with a thousand cases of those cakes when Bill Knapp’s went bankrupt.

Many twists and turns later (including the sale and eventual closure of Livonia-based Awrey’s in 2023), Bill Knapp’s Bakery Outlet is slated to open in early May in the business park off Airport Blvd. and W. Ellsworth Rd.

Restaurant relics on display and branded merch cater to diners’ nostalgia, but this is more of a test market for his Knapp’s-branded baked goods. Produced at several commercial bakeries, they’re sold at supermarkets in thirty states, more than the restaurant ever reached. “It is very complex,” Carrier says. “It’s a logistical spiderweb to get things to where they need to be.”

He had intended to launch the outlet in Saline, until recently the company’s headquarters, but the demands of the commercial business, and then the Covid pandemic, delayed things. “Now we have somebody ready to run it, which is key,” he says: Michael Greene, whose long resume includes a stint directing catering for Zingerman’s.

Besides the familiar celebration cakes, they’ll feature about a dozen varieties of donuts, grab-and-go cups of donut holes, iced breads made to withstand the toaster, and “ToasterTops” resembling the tops of muffins.

A selection of other Michigan-based products round out the retail experience. There’s a discount section of items that are “really pretty good but not perfect for a sales sample” to send to their commercial clients, Carrier says.

He often hears stories about what Bill Knapp’s meant to families and—though it wasn’t his doing—still gets emails from customers angry at the company’s botched attempt to modernize in response to emergent competition from more youth-oriented chains that also served alcohol.

“‘That was then, this is WOW!’—that campaign put them under, to be sure!” he reflects. With the first Bill Knapp’s store in twenty-two years anticipating early-day donut-shop-type hours, Carrier shares his admittedly second-guess proposition that Bill Knapp’s should instead have started serving breakfast: “I think that would have saved them if they had gone that route.”

Bill Knapp’s Bakery Outlet, 3728 Plaza Dr., ste. 2 (Airport Plaza Business Park). (734) 316–2894. Opens early May 2024. Daily 7 a.m.–1 p.m. billknapps.com