Best Locally Owned Eatery in Michigan Has 70 Years of Sandwich Magic

If there's one thing we know, Michiganders show some serious love for our locally owned businesses. Shopping local and supporting our friends and neighbors is what it's all about, and it's pretty cool when they get some well-deserved notoriety.

Those mom-and-pop shops scattered across the country not only offer a sense of community but also a serious history, especially when it comes to locally owned restaurants. About 53% of American restaurants are still family-owned according to statistics. 

OnDeck decided to celebrate those special places with local roots and compile a list of the best locally-owned restaurants in the country.  The OnDeck team turned to Yelp to "retrieve publicly available ratings and review numbers for 149,099 independent restaurants within the most populated cities in every state and across the following categories of cuisine served: pizza, vegan, burgers, breakfast and international cuisine (e.g., Chinese food)", they said. 

Get our free mobile app

They then filtered the results to find which spots had at least a four-star rating or higher across every state to find the best of the best.

"We could then rank restaurants within each state and within each category overall based on average ratings, breaking any ties by placing a restaurant higher if it had the greatest number of reviews".

What's the Top Rated Locally Owned Restaurant in Michigan?

For almost 70 years this locally-owned sub-shop Ernie's Market has been an iconic staple in the community of Oak Park, Michigan, so it's no surprise that it carries the highest ranking on the list of best locally-owned restaurants in the state. Owner Ernie Hassan can still be seen behind the counter serving up their legendary sandwiches. Known for their famous Monster sandwich, Ernie's earned the top spot in Michigan with an overall rating of 4.8 out of 5!

You can check out the full list of other Michigan notables making the list here, and visit Ernie's at 8500 Capital Street in Oak Park to see what all the delicious hype is about!