The Little Grill: Three Years Strong and Opening for Dinner
As The Little Grill approaches its three year anniversary of reopening in March 2026, owners Ron and Melaine Copeland have plenty to celebrate and even more to look forward to.
A Track Record of Excellence
Since reopening in March 2023, The Little Grill has maintained an impressive 4.8-star rating, with nearly all five-star reviews. In three years, the restaurant has received only about ten non-five-star reviews a testament to their unwavering commitment to quality and service.
“We don’t do anything to try to get people to leave reviews. They just do or they don’t. At our quarterly all-staff meetings, we read the reviews from that quarter, and we don’t have to curate them or anything. They’re all glowing.”
The Secret Sauce, Culture and Vision
Source : Daily News Record. The Little Grill Collective cooks.
The success stems from a deliberate approach to building team culture. Following the Entrepreneurial Operating System outlined in "Traction" by Gino Wickman, The Little Grill holds quarterly all-staff meetings and off-site leadership sessions that keep the team aligned and energized.
"Human beings can only maintain a vision for 90 days," Ron notes, citing Wickman's observation. "You have to keep telling everyone the vision every 90 days, or they lose their way."
The restaurant operates on five core values developed by identifying the qualities of the best grill employees over the decades: extreme hospitality, team-oriented approach, strong work ethic, and a genuine love of the business itself. Their purpose is simple but powerful: creating "joyous customer experiences," or JCEs as the staff calls them.
"You hear people talking about another JCE, because customers do sometimes become joyful," Ron says. "It's just a restaurant. They're just having food. But there's something about it being at The Grill sometimes, suddenly, you're full of joy."
Ron calls it "the twinkle thing"—something intangible but undeniable. "The closer you look for the magic, the harder it is to find. It's just an impossibly small building. But then there's something—the twinkle thing. I don't know what it is."
That magic—the "twinkle thing" as Ron calls it—is perhaps best illustrated by JB Amana, the current weekday shift manager who moved to Harrisonburg from East Texas. She applied to work at The Little Grill for one specific reason: she could tell the employees were happy.
"I am proud of that," Ron says. "Someone can come there and feel that happiness, that joy. I've learned to not micromanage as much and not feel like I have to control everything. It's the only way to grow."
Dinner is Here
On January 29, 2026, The Little Grill celebrated its grand opening for dinner service, marking a significant expansion after three years of focusing exclusively on breakfast and lunch.
The new dinner menu features a tapas-style approach with what Ron describes as "Southern Comfort, hippie chic" vibes. Chef Bill Bleeker from Local Chop, who helped restart The Grill in 2023, is returning as a freelance consultant to design the dinner menu.
"Anything he redid, like the huevos rancheros or the grits, those are the things that customers stop and go, 'This is so good,'" Ron shares.
Fadia, described as "literally, the best hospitality person I've ever known," will serve as the front-of-house presence for all three dinner nights (Thursday through Saturday). The team has been meticulously planning every detail, from plates and napkins to lighting and ambiance."We're really trying to create a situation where someone will walk in and be like, 'Oh, this is cool. This is The Grill, but it's different," Ron explains.
The Practical Side
Source : The Little Grill
The dinner expansion isn't just about growth,it's also a practical necessity. With limited seating, the restaurant has reached capacity during peak weekend hours, sometimes with a waitlist of up to 40 parties. The team made a conscious decision to prioritize the in-house experience, refusing to do to-go orders or delivery when on a wait.
"You can imagine getting ten to-go orders on a Sunday morning—all of a sudden, you'd be waiting 45 minutes for your food, and it'd be terrible," Ron says.
Looking Ahead
Beyond dinner service, The Little Grill has ambitious plans for the future. A food truck in the parking lot will eventually handle weekend to-go orders and delivery. Once dinner service is well-established, the restaurant plans to bring back live entertainment and the beloved Sunday night open stage that was a staple in the 1990s.
"I'm trying to make The Grill sane," Ron reflects. "I've done too many insane things in my life. My vision has been, in five years, we'd have breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and entertainment on the weekends, open stage."
The Legacy Continues
Source : The Little Grill. Amy & Chris Boyer around 1985, started full service including Sunday Brunch
“Someone has turned on a coffee pot in that building and made eggs pretty much every day since the mid-1940s. The wooden booth letters spelling ‘Little Grill’ were carved before plastic existed—a relic that has witnessed generations of breakfasts, first dates, and quiet morning rituals.”
When Ron bought The Little Grill, he inherited 80 years of stories.
Gino Wickman's Entrepreneurial Operating System helped Ron understand how to steward that legacy by identifying three uniques: a welcoming environment, legacy status, and dedication to excellence.
This clarity gave Ron permission to tell the grill's story. It led to Flashback Fridays, where customers share memories of first dates, first performances, the morning they became regulars without realizing when it happened.
"When we first started, I was thinking, we're sitting on all these pictures and stories, and there's nowhere to tell them," Ron recalls. "But then I realized, oh yeah, there is. Tell them constantly."
Those stories aren't marketing, they're evidence. Evidence that this place has held space for people's lives for eight decades.
"It gives you this mystique," Ron says. "But it's not even mystique. It's what it is. It has a story that's way bigger than me and the people who are there right now."
The food, Ron insists, is almost beside the point. "The food is always just a vehicle for whatever else is happening. The bigger story."
That bigger story is written in layers: regulars who come every Saturday, college students who return with their own children, staff who've loved The Grill across decades. It's in the wooden letters that have watched it all. The real legacy isn't the building or the food—it's the space where joy accumulates quietly, cup of coffee by cup of coffee, until this impossibly small building becomes part of your story too.
Embracing Technology While Honoring Legacy
The Little Grill on Apple App Store and Google Play Store
One of the more innovative moves has been the development of a custom app that allows customers to join the waitlist from home. Despite initial skepticism from advisors who suggested a simple online waitlist, Ron pushed for the app.
"Everyone I talked to told me that was stupid and that it wasn't worth the energy," Ron recalls. "But when we start having bands, you're going to be able to buy tickets on there. Instead of a website, it gives it a little bit of a cool vibe."
The technology has been a game-changer, particularly during busy weekends like Parents Weekend, solving both the wait time problem and parking congestion.
Download their app to join the waitlist or visit them for breakfast or order online for pickup on their website. Open for breakfast and lunch Tuesday through Sunday.
Interview by Sarah Golibart Gorman | Written & edited by Michelle Hinegardner
