Travail Kitchen and Amusements co-owner Mike Brown would prefer not to think back to the early days of Covid. “It’s kind of a stain on the world,” he says. Like many restaurateurs, the closures and financial and personnel losses gave Brown and his partners time and incentive to evolve.

“We had to rebuild and rethink who we are and how we run our business. Everything we knew from before was no longer there. … Coming out of that, we thought, let’s build this business a little bit differently.”

Brown saw about 80% of his 100-person team depart during the pandemic—not uncommon across the hospitality industry at the time.

But now, five years out, he and partners Bob Gerken and James Winberg are betting on expansion and diversification. Once a relatively insular and localized company, Travail has been opening new concepts of its own while buying and reinvigorating other restaurateurs’ businesses. The growth will provide opportunities for Travail’s key staffers to evolve professionally.

Today, Travail employs about 180 across its entire operation, which encompasses six food businesses, including its namesake restaurant and Nouvelle Brewing (containing Pig Ate My Pizza), in Robbinsdale, with plans for a second Pig in Bloomington, slated to open this summer. Brown hopes to bump head count to 240 by the end of 2025.

“We built [our staff] to a point where the business had to grow,” he explains. “It’s an internal need for our company.”

Travail purchased Graze Food Hall in Minneapolis’ North Loop last fall. It bought the entire enterprise (but not the building), which encompasses seven cooking stalls. Travail operates one stall—Umami, which serves Asian cuisine staples like dumplings, sushi, and rice bowls. The rest are leased by other restaurateurs, including Kate and Gustavo Romero, the duo behind James Beard Award-nominated Nixta, and JBA-winning Alex Roberts of Alma and Brasa.

A couple months after the Graze acquisition, Travail announced plans to reopen Italian Eatery near Lake Nokomis in Minneapolis. Its founders closed it this past May after 10 years and left the restaurant business. Though Travail has added its trademark “by Travail” to the logo, Brown says the company has made it a point not to change much. “There’s a huge, rich history there that we are dedicated to preserving,” he says.

Taking over existing concepts is a departure for Travail, which has been known over its 15-year history for highly inventive one-off concepts; the company was among the first to do pop-ups locally, for instance. But Brown maintains that Travail has always been a collaborative endeavor. “We’ve been a group that’s taken pride in working with and learning from other people,” he says.

The company is also creating new concepts, such as cocktail bar Stargazer, which opened in Northeast Minneapolis in December. (Travail hired Meteor owner Robb Jones as its beverage director.)

Brown declined to disclose whether Travail is funding its expansion through debt, outside investment, or cash flow.

It hasn’t been easy for the partners to hand over some of the reins. “It took us a solid two years to let go of what we thought was our responsibility and allow the leaders we brought in to grow into it and own it,” Brown says. In the end, though, the move has given the partners—who’ve all become parents in the last decade—more balance in their lives.

Just don’t call it a succession plan. “I don’t think we’re there quite yet,” he jokes. As Brown sees it, it’s a natural progression.

The focus on human capital may be atypical in the industry, but Molly Hermann, who recently joined Travail as director of operations from the Market at Malcolm Yards, describes the partners as “people builders before they were empire builders.”

The restaurant industry hasn’t usually operated this way. “In this business, it used to be ‘Run them till they’re done,’” Brown says. “We’ve definitely switched gears on that.”

“We built [our staff] to the point where the business had to grow.”

—Mike Brown, co-owner, Travail

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