Our Story: The Buck Burgers & Brew
THE BUCK BURGERS & BREW PROMISE: To provide our guests with an exceptional hospitality experience, freshest local ingredients, and an affordable venue where our employees can excel at providing great service.
The focus of The Buck will always be on local food and local people. The Buck also specializes in offering a topnotch selection of rotating Michigan craft beers and food sourced as locally as possible.
The Buck Burgers and Brew is known to locals as the go-to hangout for craft beer and gourmet pub fare in Southwest Michigan.
In a remodeled historic downtown building, The Buck entertains an industrial-chic setting featuring the original bar, loft seating, and two outdoor decks promising stellar views of awe-inspiring Lake Michigan sunsets.
The historic building The Buck inhabits, built in the late 1800s, has seen its share of transition. It has been a pool hall, a gift shop, and even a confectionary store. Then, for more than 50 years, it was the Silver Dollar Café— known to regulars as “The Buck”.
Following the closing of the Silver Dollar Café, Port 412, an upscale martini bar, made its mark upon the building’s history by renovating the top-floor apartments into an upper extension of the restaurant and adding outdoor seating.
The short-lived existence of the martini bar left the updated venue to be bought by now owner Ken Kozminksi. And in 2012, he reinstated the building as The Buck Burgers and Brew.
A longtime fan of the Silver Dollar, Kozminksi reopened the restaurant as an upscale eatery with a relaxed atmosphere. He named it “The Buck” as a play on the nickname for the burgers once sold at the Silver Dollar Café.
Since opening, The Buck’s many accolades include being voted as the Herald Palladium’s Readers Choice for best burgers and best beer selection in Southwest Michigan, boasting 74 draft tap handles—the largest selection in Southwest Michigan.