The Viral Cafe Bringing Tourists to Michigan’s Thumb

Caseville — The Thumb gets a bad rap. It's flat, quiet, and pretty boring. If you grew up downstate, you probably think of the Thumb as the part of the map you drive past every summer on the way to somewhere actually scenic.

Caseville is the exception. It's always had a little more going for it than the rest. They have the Cheeseburger Festival, a real downtown, a real beach, and the same Northern Michigan charm you'd find in the 231, but last year, hundreds of people were making the trip to Caseville for a reason that had absolutely nothing to do with Lake Huron.

A family-owned restaurant and café, called the Beachy's Complex, went absolutely viral on TikTok, bringing hundreds of visitors to the Thumb all summer long. And this summer, they expanded with something completely unique, unlike anything I've seen before: a miniature shopping mall built out of sheds in the backyard.

The Beachy family now owns six restaurants and cafés in Caseville, but it all started with Lefty's Diner, a small family restaurant where matriarch Bethanie and her kids—Seth, Westin, Garet, and Kyle—learned the restaurant business the old-fashioned way: flipping pancakes, washing dishes, and getting yelled at during a lunch rush.

Somewhere in there, Westin and Kyle figured out the part of the job that actually mattered to them, which wasn't the food so much as the people eating it.

And that's how Beachy's was born.

With their stepdad Curt—a farmer by trade—and their mom anchoring things, they opened Beachy's Restaurant and eventually Beachy's Bake & Brew, both sitting side by side right on Main Street in downtown Caseville.

And if you're making the trip, these are the two you want to see.

Beachy's Restaurant serves everything from burgers and seafood to steaks and comfort-food classics. They have an indoor and outdoor bar and live music almost every night during the summer.

Right next door sits Beachy's Bake & Brew, known for its flavored matcha lattes, handmade pastries, cute merchandise, and an incomparably designed interior. This is the one that went viral on TikTok, and it's easy to see why.

The whole craze started with Kyle, the 22-year-old daughter of the Beachy family and primary owner of Bake & Brew. Last spring, she began posting videos on TikTok documenting her life running the café. Videos of opening the shop in the morning, stocking shelves, and baking pastries were each getting hundreds of thousands of views.

Soon, people were driving from all over the country just to visit. Families from Ohio. Day-trippers from Indiana. Vacationers from Arizona. People were reportedly driving more than 16 hours just to try the pastries and matcha they’d seen online.

But honestly, what intrigued me most wasn't the food. It was the design.

The two-story café looks like the dream bedroom of every VSCO girl from 2019 who grew up.

So basically, me.

The space somehow manages to feel trendy without feeling forced. There are colorful drinks, shelves full of books, trinkets, and cozy corners tucked into every available space.

Every detail feels intentional. Every shelf feels curated. It's the kind of place where you can spend 20 minutes waiting for a coffee and not spend a second looking at your phone.

But what really makes the property special is outdoors.

Both the restaurant and café open into a massive shared backyard lined with string lights, outdoor seating, yard games, and even a play area for kids to keep busy.

And as if the place wasn't already cool enough, this summer they've added something unlike anything I've ever seen before: a miniature shopping mall in the backyard.

Over the winter, while most of Michigan was busy trying to survive the cold, Kyle started documenting a new project on her TikTok: building "Beachyville," a mini shopping mall out of Home Depot sheds behind her café.

For 198 days, she worked on it. Painting, decorating, and designing each storefront with a unique theme. According to her videos, the project used 48 gallons of paint and took nearly seven months to complete through one of the coldest parts of the Michigan year.

Beachyville officially opened to the public last month, and it's easily one of the most creative things I've stumbled across anywhere in Northern Michigan.

Visitors enter through a tiny "grocery store" before wandering into a circular village of miniature businesses. There's a toy shop, post office, surf shop, fish market, deli, pet store, flower shop, laundromat, auto shop, and more.

Every shed has its own personality.

My personal favorite was the Doodle Shop, where visitors are encouraged to write and draw directly on the walls.

It's impossible not to appreciate the amount of effort that went into this place. Every sign, piece of merchandise, and color of paint feels intentional.

It's easy to dismiss a place like Caseville as another seasonal beach town. But standing in that backyard, with live music drifting across the patio, kids running between the shops, families carrying coffees from the café and food from the restaurant, it makes sense why people have been driving from all over the Midwest to see it.

In a region not exactly overflowing with attractions, Beachy's has managed to create something genuinely unique.

It probably isn't enough to convince everyone to fall in love with the Thumb.

But if you've never had a reason to make the trip before, this might be the one.