The Little Grill has been a restaurant in Harrisonburg, Virginia, since the 1940s; before that it was an antique store in the 1930s and a communal bathhouse for a nearby swimming pool in the 1920s. In the early 1980s, Christopher Boyer, working for then owner and "master chef" Maria Prytula, a Ukrainian-born artist and poet (d. 2012) They started renting the place out on weekend nights to present rock shows and theater. The restaurant's "hippified" atmosphere began during this period. Chris bought the restaurant in 1985 with blues musician and Little Grill cook, Bob Driver. The
diner became a full-service restaurant serving three meals a day, with live entertainment on the weekends. John Eckman bought out Boyer's share of the business in 1986, and he and Driver sold the restaurant to Tom Kildea in 1990. Kildea sold the restaurant to his former employee Ron Copeland in 1992.
Worker-owned cooperative From 2003 to 2022, the restaurant was a worker owned collective. The collective was known for its quirky, eclectic, down-home atmosphere, with boxes of old
Trivial Pursuit cards on the tables. As a quaint and cozy music venue, the Grill has served as a launch for musical acts such as
The Hackensaw Boys and
Old Crow Medicine Show. Little Grill Collective was setup as a worker-owned, democratically managed
cooperative, where members have joined together to produce goods and services for sale. The owner Ron Copeland decided to attend graduate school, but he didn't want to see The Little Grill close as a result so friends encouraged him to investigate worker-owned cooperatives such as
Cheese Board Collective in
Berkeley, California. Discovering mentorship and guidance there, Copeland and others worked together to launch The Little Grill Collective in 2003. Not everyone who worked at the collective became an owner, but 9–12 of the employees usually signed on for the privilege at any one time. The collective had survived almost two decades when it ceased operations in September 2022, with just five worker-owners lasting until then.
Previous owners return Ron and Melaine Copeland, who owned The Little Grill from 1992 to 2003—before helping its employees convert it to a worker-owned collective—have signed a lease on the building and intend to restart operations in 2023. Ron discovered The Little Grill, a "staple restaurant with an eighty-year pedigree", as a James Madison University student. He started working there in the mid-1980s, hiring as a dishwasher the woman who would later become his wife and mother of his children. He and Melaine married in 1994 while running the diner together. The Copelands reopened the diner as "The Little Grill" in March 2023. On February 18, 2023, as part of massive reopening efforts, James Madison University students as part of GIVE (Growth International Volunteer Excursions) Andy Luong, head volunteer coordinator at GIVE, and five other volunteers from James Madison University helped take down the Little Grill sign for refurbishing, power wash exterior walls, and prep the interior for painting. Both owners are alumni of nearby James Madison University, Ron in 1990 and Melanie in 1992 and both view The Little Grill as an important second home to the JMU community. They have hired William "Billy" Bleecker, co-chef at Clementine Cafe in downtown Harrisonburg, as general manager. == Menu ==