"If they need us, we are there."
That's what Bob Milosavljevski told a reporter this spring, when his sons Mike and Tony opened the third Motz's Burgers location in the family's history at 18714 Eureka Road. Bob wasn't talking about a grand opening speech. He meant it literally: if the counter gets slammed, if a fryer breaks, if the new place needs an extra set of hands, he and his wife Mary will show up. That's the kind of sentence that only makes sense from a family that has run the same burger recipe since Prohibition was still the law of the land.
Southgate now has a piece of Detroit history that most of the region has only eaten at one address for nearly a century. But the more interesting story isn't that Motz's opened here. It's where on Eureka Road the family chose to land, and what that choice says about which stretch of this road is actually doing the work.
A Family That Only Moves When It's Sure
Motz's traces back to 1929, when a slider diner opened at Fort and Green in the Delray neighborhood of southwest Detroit. The Mott family bought it in the early 1930s and ran it for decades, serving the same small, griddled beef patties with grilled onions folded into the meat, a dab of mustard and ketchup, and a pickle on a soft bun. In 1996, Bob and Mary Milosavljevski bought the shop from the Mott family and kept everything about it except the spelling, changing Mott's to Motz's out of respect for the name they'd inherited.
Here's the detail that tells you how this family operates: they didn't open a second location until 2023, on Plymouth Road in Redford. That's 27 years of running one counter before deciding the recipe was ready to travel. The Southgate shop followed just three years later, with a soft opening on March 14, 2026, and an official grand opening on March 23. Three locations in ninety-seven years is not how a growing chain behaves. It's how a family treats something they consider fragile enough to get wrong.
Mike and Tony now run day-to-day operations at the new shop, built out of a former bakery space with a dining room that seats about a dozen people. Counter service, quick turns, and an early close are the whole point. This isn't a restaurant chasing dinner traffic. According to Detroit Free Press reporting, the Southgate location is a grab-and-go stop first.
Two Different Eureka Roads
If you've lived in Southgate for any stretch of time, you probably think of Eureka Road as the corridor anchored by the old Southgate Shopping Center, the L-shaped strip mall built at the corner of Eureka and Trenton back in 1957. At its peak that center held more than thirty stores, with Montgomery Ward as its anchor tenant from 1959 onward. According to the property's own Wikipedia entry, the decline set in around the turn of the millennium, and what remains today is a much thinner lineup, with a gym and a buffet among the survivors in a footprint that once needed thirty tenants to fill.
Motz's didn't go there. It went east on Eureka Road, closer to I-75, to a stretch that's been quietly building its own identity out of standalone storefronts rather than a mall bay.
| The Old Anchor Corner (Eureka & Trenton) | The Newer Independent Stretch (Eureka near I-75) | |
|---|---|---|
| Built | 1957-58, L-shaped strip mall | Freestanding storefronts, various decades |
| Original draw | Montgomery Ward, Woolworth's, Kresge's | Small owner-run shops |
| Current state | Thinned tenant roster, big-box survivors | Sushi Q, Black Pine Tree Sushi, Lady Jane's, Eureka Farm Market |
| Newest addition | None recent | Motz's Burgers, March 2026 |
Motz's new address, 18714 Eureka Road, sits almost next door to Black Pine Tree Sushi at 18700, close enough that the Free Press described the two as sharing a complex. Farther down the same road, Sushi Q at 16052 Eureka does business right beside Lady Jane's Haircuts for Men at 16050. Add Eureka Farm Market at 14601 Eureka, and you've got a run of small, independently owned food stops that never needed an anchor tenant to draw people in. They just kept showing up, one storefront at a time, while the old mall corner emptied out.
What You'll Actually Find at the Counter
The Southgate menu is the same as it's been for generations: small beef sliders topped with grilled onions, mustard, ketchup, and pickles, plus shoestring fries and thick-battered onion rings on the side. Milkshakes come in vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry, made with locally sourced dairy.
A few practical notes if you're planning a stop:
- Address: 18714 Eureka Road, Southgate
- Hours: Monday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., closed Sunday
- Seating: a small dining room, about a dozen seats, plus counter pickup
- Phone: 734-288-0587
This is a lunch counter, not a destination for a leisurely dinner. The Detroit original on West Fort Street runs the same way, closing by 5 p.m. and shutting down entirely on weekends. If you're used to sit-down service with a server checking in every few minutes, recalibrate. Order at the counter, grab a stool, and expect your food fast.
The Recognition Followed Them Here
The original Fort Street location has picked up national attention over the years, including a spot on USA Today's list of America's great burger places, credited to burger historian George Motz, and inclusion on Eater Detroit's map of the city's best burgers. That reputation belongs to the family and the recipe, not to a single building. It's part of what makes the Southgate opening feel different from a typical new-restaurant announcement. This isn't an untested concept betting on a new zip code. It's a recipe that's already been vetted by nearly a hundred years of regulars, now available a short drive closer to home for anyone living Downriver.
Worth the Detour
The next time you're driving Eureka Road past the old shopping center and wondering why half the storefronts look tired, remember that the road doesn't end there. Keep going toward I-75 and you'll find a cluster of small, family-run spots that have been doing the quiet work of keeping a commercial corridor alive one storefront at a time. Motz's just joined them, and given how carefully this family has chosen its last two moves, that's a vote of confidence worth noticing.
Southgate residents who've watched storefronts turn over for years know that the neighborhoods that hold their character are usually the ones where small, independent businesses keep choosing to stay. That's the same instinct that guides how Lisa Sobell works with buyers and sellers across Southgate and the Downriver corridor: paying attention to the details that make a block worth living on, not just the numbers on a listing sheet. If you're thinking about what your own home is worth in a neighborhood that keeps proving it has staying power, request a free home valuation and let's talk about what you've got.
