ADRIAN — For 35 years spanning the late 19th and early 20th centuries, people traveling around downtown Adrian could hop a ride on the streetcar that ran up and down Maumee Street, the city’s main thoroughfare at the time.

And as Josh Roth was looking for things about Adrian’s history to use in connection with his new business, Maumee Street Taproom + Kitchen at 101 E. Maumee St. — at Adrian’s historic “Four Corners” — he knew exactly what the business’s logo should be: one of those trolleys.

Roth, who’s also the owner of the Musgrove + Co. coffee shops in Tecumseh and Adrian, opened Maumee Street Taproom + Kitchen in October. The building was previously the site of the Rice and Barley Taphouse and then a to-go eatery, Reggies Tacos.

The restaurant started out by serving dinner Thursdays through Sundays, recently got its liquor license, and has begun expanding its days and hours of operation.

Roth got his new restaurant going in collaboration with Chris Wanke of Three Dudes & Dinner, whom Roth originally approached about a year ago about helping expand the food program at Musgrove + Co.

As it turned out, “we have very similar visions,” Roth said. Like himself, Wanke “is very interested in community, and good food is very important to him.”

Once Roth’s vision for the Maumee Street Taproom + Kitchen began to take shape, Wanke consulted on kitchen operations and helped Roth develop the menu and processes and hire the staff, while Roth brought his own front-of-house experience and business acumen into the equation.

“I really enjoy the business side of things, as well as creating an experience for people,” he said. “And I enjoy getting to work with people as a team.”

Maumee Street Taproom + Kitchen offers a menu of what the restaurant bills as “gourmet-style comfort food.” The main dishes will generally stay the same, while the starters and snacks, as they’re called, change regularly.

Roth describes the menu as “things we’re familiar with but elevated,” with nostalgic choices like fried chicken, country-fried steak, roasted turkey, and a turkey pot pie that, at least as of the restaurant’s first couple of months in business, was hands-down its most popular entree.

Right now, the salads have locally sourced ingredients, and Roth anticipates working with area farmers to source his restaurant’s meats in addition to the produce. “We live in an agricultural area. It was really important to us to have local foods,” he said.

Similarly, he has established, or is working on, partnerships with area brewers and distillers including Four Keys Brewing in Blissfield, Pavlov’s Brewing in Temperance, Mammoth Distillery in Adrian, and Manchester’s River Raisin Distillery.

The restaurant’s first months of operation have gone extremely well, Roth said. In fact, “business has exceeded expectations. People enjoy coming in for dinner, and we’ve had return customers.” And, he added, the reaction to the food has been positive.

As Roth was getting the building ready and thinking about how to incorporate Adrian history into it, an hours-long visit to the Lenawee Historical Museum one day to look through their holdings introduced him to the streetcar that at one time ran right past the building he now owned.

As a result, the streetcar not only serves as the restaurant’s logo and graces its Facebook page, but images of it also have prominent spots on two walls. Another wall has a large reproduction of an early postcard showing the streetcar coming down Maumee Street, along with an enlarged replica of a ticket entitling a rider to:

One Ride in City of Adrian, Mich.
On the cars of Adrian Street Railway Company only.

Also on that wall are a replica of a monthly statement from the Bond Steel Post Co., which was once located on Adrian’s east side and was part of the city’s once-significant fence industry, and a steel nameplate reading “Oliver of Adrian.”

Roth’s entrepreneurial spirit was sparked as a boy thanks to his grandfather, Otis Lang, who traveled around selling archery targets that he had designed. 

“He was a very creative guy,” Roth said, “and as I was growing up he always supported and encouraged me in what I wanted to do.”

A Tecumseh native, Roth became a businessman way back in kindergarten when he sold worms. “Other kids had lemonade stands. I sold nightcrawlers,” he said, laughing.

He did a variety of handyman-type jobs in high school and, after graduation, moved to Florida and worked in construction. Eventually, though — while he admits he definitely preferred Florida’s winters to Michigan’s — he decided he wanted to come home.

“I missed the small-town feel,” he said.

He opened both Way of Life Wellness Center and Musgrove + Co. in Tecumseh in 2020, expanding the latter to its second location in Adrian two years later.

It was Musgrove + Co. that “really built a passion for the community in me,” he said, as well as instilling in him an appreciation of the wider community it takes to produce the coffee, which comes from a farm in Costa Rica, in the first place. 

As of mid-November, the Maumee Street Taproom + Kitchen had nine employees and Roth was working on adding more as the business expanded operations. Because having good food has to go hand-in-hand with providing good service, “at the end of the day it’s all about hiring and staffing,” he said, and he’s intent on providing a welcoming workplace where people want to come to work each day.

Roth is very excited about the possibilities that lie ahead for his new enterprise.

He wants the spirit of Adrian’s past, embodied by the trolley that’s now a Maumee Street Taproom + Kitchen icon, to infuse not only the restaurant, but the city and its downtown in general.

At the time that iconic trolley line was in operation, “Adrian was a very bustling town with a lot of industry,” he said. “We want to harness that energy. It can be done.”

Maumee Street Taproom + Kitchen’s current hours and other information can be found on its Facebook page and online at www.maumeestreet.com.