Yvonne Byrd has run a bar in Detroit since 2008. Vondie's on the River was the first, named after her childhood nickname. It ran until 2012, when the lease wasn't renewed.
By then it had hosted Stretch Money, Marv Won, Monica Blaire, and a Movement-week DJ run that pulled people from across the city. Byrd opened Epitome Lounge on West Congress next, then Minnie's Rhythm Cafe on Larned. Both closed for reasons outside her control.
Minnie's Detroit, which opened on Trumbull on Saturday, January 25, 2025, is the fourth. She bought the 7,000-square-foot building in 2023, gut-renovated it with her son Curtis Johnson II, and named the place after her mother. The grand reopening ran from 1 p.m. to 2 a.m. Natasha Miller and Mic Phelps performed.
The address is 5221 Trumbull, in Woodbridge. The room serves what Byrd's menu calls Minnie Plates: lollipop lamb chops, chicken lettuce wraps, salmon croquette bites, Minnie's wings, seafood mac and cheese. There is a midnight brunch on Friday and Saturday that runs until 3 a.m. and is one of the few legitimate late-night kitchens in the city.
Cocktail program. Live entertainment most nights. Poetry.
Plans for a small boutique hotel in the back of the building. A rooftop deck for warm months. Byrd's grandfather, Reverend Edward Solomon, founded New Providence Baptist Church, one of the larger Black churches in Detroit.
Her son spent two years in Las Vegas and came back wanting to bring DJs from outside the city to Minnie's. Byrd has financed every venture independently. She has fought breast cancer three separate times in the past 14 years.
None of that is in the press release. What's in the press release is the music. Byrd has been clear since Vondie's that the point is to put Black Detroit nightlife on the same map as everything else, and to do it on her own building.
The previous three bars she ran in spaces she rented. This one she owns. She has said she loves to have a good time. She means it the way someone means it after running four bars in seventeen years.
5221 Trumbull St., Woodbridge.
