The Milwaukee Athletic Club is closing its bar and members-only restaurant and pointing what is left of the operation back at the gym. Food and beverage service gives way to an athletic focus on Nov. 16.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported Thursday that the club, at 758 N. Broadway, is shutting those food-and-beverage operations because of rising costs. Tony Janowiec, whose firm operates the club, said the pivot to an athletic focus comes Nov. 16. The stated plan is to concentrate on the club's signature athletic facilities.
Sixty-Five Million, Then the Dining Room Goes
This is not a club that just wandered downtown. The MAC reopened in 2022 after a $65 million renovation, the Milwaukee Business Journal reported. Four years later, the rooms that made the place feel like a social club are the ones coming off the schedule.
The club has not put operating losses, revenue, or a staffing plan on the record. Rising costs is the reason attached to the closure. The dollar figure attached to the reopening is the one the public can actually see.
The Bar Closes; the Event Contract Is Older
In-house dining and outside catering have already been split. Benson's Restaurant Group, owned by Marcus Investments, announced it would serve as the MAC's exclusive caterer and event manager. Covering that 2025 arrangement, the Business Journal reported that club leadership planned to focus on member engagement.
That was last year's assignment: keep members close, and let Benson's run the events. This week's move is narrower and blunter. The bar and the members-only restaurant close, and the operating firm says the club's attention goes to athletic facilities. The two statements can sit next to each other without becoming the same promise.
Costs Everyone Cites, Books Nobody Published
Restaurant operators around the state have been naming the same pressure. Respondents to the Wisconsin Restaurant Association's April 2026 PULSE survey most often listed rising food and wholesale costs and broader economic conditions as their top business concerns. A clear majority expected profit margins to decrease by the end of 2026.
The association also puts a fence around those answers. The surveys were not conducted with the random sampling needed for statistical inference about a broader population. They describe the operators who responded. They do not price a cocktail at 758 N. Broadway.
Labor is the other number floating around the industry, and it is not the MAC's either. The National Restaurant Association reported that in 2024, salaries and wages including benefits were a median 36.5% of sales among full-service survey respondents and 31.7% among limited-service respondents. Those shares ran above the roughly 33% and 28% averages in the association's 2010, 2013, and 2016 reports. Context for a costly business. Not a ledger for this club.
What members can mark on a calendar is simpler. On Nov. 16 the bar and the members-only restaurant are done, and the club's own account of the place runs through its athletic facilities.
