Steven Fata

I was born and raised in Lansing, Michigan. I’m a third-generation entrepreneur. My grandfather opened a store in Downtown Lansing in 1923 after immigrating to America from Italy. My father and uncles started their own business, Paul Fata and Sons, that was a wholesale grocery business serving primarily restaurants and bars all over the Midwest. I obviously grew up in an entrepreneurial environment, so it was always of interest to me. In the 1980s, my father began buying bars and restaurants in the Lansing area, and I began working at them. By the time I was 25, I was running multiple different bars under his mentorship and the mentorship of many other Italian-Americans in the Lansing area.

I attended Michigan State University, where I studied geography. I began my entrepreneurial career in 1992 when I opened my first bar, Reno’s East, a sports bar in East Lansing. After that, I began to invest in and open multiple restaurants in the Mid-Michigan area. Some of these restaurants include: Champion’s Sports Bar and Grill, Plum Crazy Sports Bar and Grill, Plum Crazy Too Sports Bar and Grill. In 2003, I sold Reno’s East to my long-time manager. I have been a mentor to her and to many restaurant and sports bar owners in both Michigan and Florida since then. In 2012, I opened a sports bar in Fort Myers, Florida, called Fadeaway Sports Bar and Grill. I closed the business in 2015 and later redeveloped the building into a Dollar Tree before ultimately selling the building.

Presently, I own my direct mail business, ANS Inc., as well as two e-commerce businesses, Honest Instruments and Aerial Graphics. Honest Instruments is a rebrand of Vintage City Guitars, and we specialize in buying and selling vintage instruments. I’ve kept my name away from the online presence because of my negative online reputation, but I’m open to including it as my online reputation becomes more positive. Aerial Graphics is an e-commerce store that sells aerial photos of lakes in Michigan. We have a library of tens of thousands of images of the various lakes in Michigan, and they now decorate thousands of cottages, cabins, and lake houses in Michigan.

Along with my businesses, I have a handful of undeveloped land properties in the Greater Lansing area that I, for some, am in the early stages of developing and for others, in discussions with major corporations to sell.

I have over 30 years of entrepreneurial experience, mostly in the direct mail space, but also in real estate development, the service industry, e-commerce, and vintage instruments.