KALAMAZOO COUNTY, MI — After nearly four decades of serving breakfast burritos, biscuits and gravy and daily lunch specials east of Kalamazoo, Niko’s Express will serve its final plates on Sunday, May 29.
The Comstock Township diner, owned and operated by Nick “Niko” Grafos and his son, Keith, announced the closure this week on its social media channels, stating that the elder Grafos was ready to retire.
“As our sign reads, ‘This is my favorite place, and these are my favorite people!’ and it will always be,” the post reads in part. “We will miss all you tremendously, but we are excited for what the next chapter holds.”
For 76-year-old Niko Grafos, that chapter will be retirement.
“It was just time,” Keith Grafos told MLive/Kalamazoo Gazette. “My dad spends quite a bit of time there and we just kind of came together as a family and decided we wanted him to be able to enjoy some semblance of retirement. He deserves a summer off.”
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The family put the business, at 5876 King Highway, up for sale in October.
At the time, Keith Grafos told MLive/Kalamazoo Gazette that it would continue to operate until the family found a buyer. But after selling the family’s other business, Niko’s Landing and Banquet Center to Comstock Township earlier this year, that plan changed, he said Tuesday.
The township, which purchased the banquet center property, at 5852 King Highway, for $975,000, plans to transform Niko’s Landing into the Comstock Township Hall.
Related: Niko’s Landing closes to become new Comstock Township Hall
“It’s been a great run,” said Keith Grafos, a 44-year-old practicing attorney who has spent much of the past couple years helping his dad out in the diner’s kitchen. “There are places that don’t make it a year or two, so to stick around for 40 years I think it says something.”
The restaurant wasn’t the first that Keith Grafos’ father opened in the community, but it stood the longest.
Niko Grafos first opened Koney Island Queen on Portage Street, in 1978, opting to shut it down a couple years later after buying Dotty’s — what would later become Niko’s Express — in Comstock Township in 1980. In addition to the Dotty’s in Comstock, Niko Grafos also owned and operated Dotty’s Parkview in Richland for over a decade, closing that down at the same time Dotty’s in Comstock became Niko’s Express in 1995.
The Niko’s rebrand came at the same time Niko’s Landing Banquet Center opened, Keith Grafos said.
Like Keith Grafos, both of his brothers, Dennis and Michael Grafos, have their own careers and did not have an interest in keeping the family restaurant going after Niko decided to retire, he said.
What the restaurant has meant to its loyal customers through the years isn’t lost on Keith Grafos, though.
“We’ve fed generations of people, parents, grandparents. Every day (since October) these people are coming up to me shaking their heads. They’re sad, and I’m gonna miss seeing these people. There are people who come in to this day I remember as a child.
“I grew up in that business, that was my home, and my brothers’ home, my whole family’s. I studied in those booths as a kid. It’s heart-wrenching, but it’s time.”
The most emotional part of making the decision to close was having to then share the news with the staff, some of whom have worked at the diner for as many as 38 years, Keith Grafos said.
“That’s when it gets real,” he said. “It gets you in the feels, it’s the people you grew up with, it’s your family.
“But, my dad, he’s in a position where he can step back, his kids all have their own careers, so it has a natural ending to it, I feel.”
And now, Keith Grafos said the family looks forward to being able to go out to brunch on Sunday.
“We want to try that for a while, to be customers,” he said with a laugh.
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