Welcome Home
“At Asher Creek Creamery & Deli, we sell sandwiches, coffee and ice cream, but our goal is that you feel an extension of our home. When you walk in, you’re welcomed to a warm place to sit and enjoy time together.
We take our sandwiches seriously. Everything is handcrafted. Our breads are sourced from Zingerman’s and our meats are locally sourced. All the recipes are from us. We design all the foods. There are ways we could shave costs on our end, but quality is the most important thing for us. We want to hit people right in the tastebuds. Everything, down to the decor, has got to be an experience. When people taste the food, I want them to know it’s family-made. We care about the quality, and we make sure our products aren’t full of garbage. It matters a lot that things are local and natural, as local and natural as you can get them. Our ice cream is a little bit of a drive up north, but they’re a small-batch handmade company. Our sodas are from Detroit, and they’re all cane sugar—it’s the old Faygo chemist that developed this pop in Detroit. Our coffee comes from a family member’s roastery.
We love Grass Lake. We met around the Detroit area, but we didn’t want to raise our kids there. We wanted to get back to a small-town community—there’s nothing like it. We moved here when the older ones were in elementary school and fell in love with the town and the community.
Then we fell in love with this building.
The building we’re in would have been the pharmacy when we moved here. It looked totally different, of course, but that’s what it was. When it became available, we saw it as a chance to not only build a business, but to do something for the community.
We opened with ice cream, and coffee came about two months later. The sandwiches were about eight months in. The opportunities are endless here in Grass Lake and we would love to go even further.
What makes Grass Lake good for a business? It’s home. We’re connected to family here, people and friends, and we try to offer something different. People ask us, ‘What are you going to do when all these other places move in?’ Celebrate! Because then the town is flourishing. Everyone has something different to offer and it’s an opportunity to walk arm-in-arm with other businesses. It took us a year and a half to finish, so in the time of us building this, Cattleman’s was bought and built, and then Prate’s came right behind it and we think that’s amazing. We want this community to grow.”
—Heather & Michael Riccardi, Asher Creek Creamery & Deli
121 E. Michigan Ave., Grass Lake, MI 49240
