Nam Nguyen, who owns NT Nail Lounge in Highland Township, is expanding into a business he has never tried before: food service. Nguyen plans to open a cafe serving coffee, matcha, ice cream, and snacks near his salon at 2823 East Highland Road, with hopes of welcoming customers around April or May of 2027.
Nguyen manages two NT Nail Lounge locations and teased the cafe plan on social media, according to WhatNow. The salon, which specializes in manicures, pedicures, dip powder, acrylic and gel-x services, sits at the northwest corner of East Highland Road and Duck Lake Road, next to Highland Square Garden. The Detroit outlet reports that the location contract for the cafe has already been signed, though no hours of operation or menu have been released yet, and Nguyen and his team say they will update the community as the opening date approaches.
A Retail Corner on the Upswing
The cafe would land in a plaza that just marked its own reinvention. In September, the commercial center at 2823 East Highland Road held a formal ribbon-cutting as the newly rebranded Highland Square, with support from local partners including Huron Valley State Bank. The same plaza is also home to Walgreens and Bad Benny's Pour House, a scratch-kitchen restaurant and craft cocktail bar that opened in 2024, per the Oakland County Times.
The intersection of East Highland Road, also known as M-59, and Duck Lake Road functions as one of the township's primary retail corridors, anchoring tenants like Metro by T-Mobile alongside the Walgreens location, according to Showcase. That corridor has been busy lately: Hoodline previously reported on nearby demolition work at M-59 and Milford Road to make way for a new Sheetz convenience store and fuel station, part of a broader wave of retail modernization along the highway.
Consolidating in Highland Township
Nguyen's expansion into food service follows an operational shift within his salon business. In March, NT Nail Spa announced that its Commerce Township location at 4853 Carroll Lake Road was temporarily closed, with staff and client appointments shifted over to the Highland Township salon. That consolidation positioned the Highland location as the focal point of Nguyen's growing footprint even before the cafe plans surfaced.
Western Oakland County has seen other retail activity recently, including a Commerce Township project that Hoodline covered this summer: a proposed 15-acre commercial development at Wise and Union Lake roads anchored by a 75,000-square-foot grocery store, in the same general market where NT Nail Lounge has maintained a customer base.
Health Rules Await a First-Time Food Operator
Because this marks Nguyen's first venture into the restaurant business, he will need to clear regulatory hurdles that don't apply to a nail salon. Under the Michigan Food Law, food service establishments in Oakland County — including coffee, matcha, ice cream and snack shops — must obtain a food service license and meet sanitation standards monitored by the Oakland County Health Division. As of February, the division has handled its food service licensing, renewal applications, inspection requests, and health complaint tracking through the online Accela Citizen Access portal, which replaced the county's former E-Health system.
Fixed food service establishments in Oakland County must also employ at least one Certified Food Safety Manager before opening to the public, per the county's sanitary code and state food regulations, with managers required to complete approved certification training such as ServSafe. Whether the cafe will operate as an integrated part of the nail salon or as a separate adjacent unit, and how any physical separation between salon services and food preparation will be handled, remain open questions ahead of the targeted spring 2027 launch.
A Growing Township Customer Base
Highland Charter Township, a residential community spanning rural areas, suburban developments and lakefront properties in western Oakland County, had an estimated 2026 population of more than 20,000 residents, up from 19,186 recorded in the 2020 U.S. Census. That growth gives Nguyen a sizable potential customer base as he prepares to add coffee, matcha, ice cream, and snacks to his salon's offerings.
