Little Grill Collective is a restaurant in Harrisonburg, Virginia. The establishment opened in June 2003 It was a worker owned collective from 2003 to 2022.

Venue: Little Grill Collective
Town: Virginia, US
Capacity: 48

Little Grill Collective is a restaurant in Harrisonburg, Virginia. The establishment opened in June 2003 It was a worker owned collective from 2003 to 2022. After ceasing operations in September 2022, previous owners Ron and Melaine Copeland reopened the diner as "The Little Grill" on March 21, 2023. 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. 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 set up 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 t