GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Spring is a slow time of year at Divani, as the restaurant and cocktail bar is at its busiest through the fall and winter.
Right now, it's only open on Fridays and Saturdays. But even so, owner Molly Kopen is hard at work keeping the books. It's easy to see how much she loves it.
"It truly has been my life for the past 10 years," Kopen said. "I love it. I love what we do. I love our guests. I love the fact that we have so many guests that are now friends of ours."
But as much as she loves it, Kopen said this is the right time to sell. She said her staff has known for about a year now and she made it "Facebook official" last month.
"Being that our lease is up, I don't want to sign another extension on that lease, which would have to be done in the next few months, for an additional five years. So either I get out now, or I sign up for five years," she said.
"For me personally, after 10 years, that's enough for me. My family is getting older. My parents are getting older. You know, at some point, I want to be back here for them. I want to go live somewhere warm for the next five or six or seven years at least, and then come back when I'm needed back."
Kopen said since she announced the sale she's received a good amount of interest and Divani has what she calls "great prospects."
"Right now I have three different groups that I'm looking at seriously. It could happen. I just want to make sure it's the right people not only for my team, and for our guests, but for them as well," she said, noting that she would only be willing to sell if she can find someone she feels is able to maintain or elevate Divani.
"They have to have the experience not only running a restaurant, but also running an event space and running both of those simultaneously with only one kitchen and only one front-of-the-house team. So you have to understand timing and things of that nature."
Kopen said the ideal buyer would be someone who knows their strengths and weaknesses and is willing to hire someone to "compensate for what they're not good at."
Divani has been in business since 2002 and Kopen took ownership in 2014.
In the first two years, the business put in a whole new kitchen and made other changes to execute Kopen's vision. She said Divani has a great team that got the business through the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
"The team wanted to come back. So I was like, 'Okay. I'll fight for it. We'll come back.' So we did, and now we're going into year 10," she said.
"If I don't sell it, I want our last day to be December 31 so we can go out on New Year's Eve, and then have January to close everything up. But hopefully, we'll find somebody."
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