How Zorbaz became greater Minnesota’s best-known beach bar

As sure as the frozen-margarita machines churn, Zorbaz patrons arrive on the shores of Brainerd’s Gull Lake by the pontoonful.

Preteen dockhands tie up the watercraft and direct boaters past the sand volleyball pit toward a sprawling beach bar that looks as if it’s been hit by a booze-swag tsunami (patio tables covered in Hamm’s cloths and topped with Kona Brewing umbrellas; an arcade claw machine filled with White Claw cans)

Here in Minnesota, Zorbaz is known as a carefree getaway, where the barstools are knotty pine and the bright-blue cocktails are garnished with plastic bobbers, where life should be “gulped, not sipped,” as its founder was fond of saying.

If the first time you heard about Zorbaz was reading the New York Times’ recent nod to its peanut butter–topped pizza, you haven’t spent enough time in Lakes Country.

Over the past half-century, Zorbaz has spread 11 locations across half the state, from Detroit Lakes to Grand Rapids. (Uberfans visit them all, in the restaurant equivalent of a religious pilgrimage.) The chain has arguably become the best-known bar/eatery outside the metro — Minnesota’s answer to Margaritaville.

Zorbaz’s detractors may gripe about mediocre food and shabby bathrooms, and their noise complaints have led to city council sanctions. But they can’t deny the integral role Zorbaz plays in Minnesota’s lake culture.

It’s the place where locals meet their spouses, host their bachelorette parties, and swing by in their wedding finery (photos of which end up tacked to Zorbaz’s walls). They bring their kids and, later, their grandkids, and even gather after a funeral. And for city folk, no trip to the cabin is complete without a visit to “Disney for adults,” as some like to call it.

Zorba’s, as it was first known, originated in the late 1960s, when Detroit Lakes native Tom Hanson started a seasonal bar called Grad School to supplement his teaching job. By 1969, he and his wife, Terry Jo, decided to relocate within Detroit Lakes’ city limits, in a defunct candy shop right off the public beach.

But the City Council didn’t like associating alcohol with education, so the Hansons christened the place Zorba’s, after the free-spirited protagonist of “Zorba the Greek” — “a man who devours life,” according to the 1964 film’s trailer. The little beach bar was a modest operation, offering frozen pizza and 3.2 beer. But Hanson was enthused by the hospitality business and soon became a full-time restaurateur, running eateries in Southern California, too.

In the early 1980s, Hanson launched a second Zorba’s in a former resort on Little Pine Lake near Perham, and then continued to open new locations every few years. Hanson’s brother-in-law Rick Jansen upgraded the menu with scratch-made pizzas and Mexican food, a rarity in rural Minnesota back then.

Equally unusual was the joint’s gimmicky marketing campaign. According to family legend, somewhere along the line Terry Jo started swapping Z’s for S’s and Zorba’s became Zorbaz, with menus and signage to drive copy editors mad. (Zorbaz customers are split 50/50 in ordering items with their “s” or “z” pronunciation, i.e., “salad” vs. “zalad.”)

Before Tom Hanson died in 2015, he passed the CEO role to eldest son Cole, who was born into the business and has worked every job. (“I’m still working in the dish pit sometimes,” he admits.) His brother Kevin runs the Alexandria location.

The defining feature of Zorbaz is prime waterfront real estate. All Zorbaz are located in smaller resort communities on heavily recreated “party” lakes, Cole says, which drives its casual dress code. Though Zorbaz proclaims, “No Zhoes no Zhirt, no Zervice,” a bikini-top counts. And the ladies who toss T-shirts over their swimsuits are complying, since nobody said anything about pants.

There’ll never be a Zorbaz on Minnetonka or White Bear so that vacationers’ visits feel special, Cole said. (The Zorbaz nearest to the Twin Cities is two hours away, on Spicer’s Green Lake.)

The Hanson family oversees the Zorbaz empire, but individual locations are run by owner-operators cultivated from within, most of whom started as teenagers in the dish pit.

This structure ensures all locations have the same overall vibe and operations, while allowing for personalization that helps regulars distinguish “their” Zorbaz from its siblings. (The Grand Rapids’ Zorbaz on Pokegama Lake, for example, has a custom booth made from a pontoon boat. Gull is decorated with vintage snowmobiles and a wooden Chris-Craft. Little Pine hosts an annual Twister party to commemorate its having survived a 1986 tornado.)

The Zorbaz menu focuses on pizzas with funky toppings (i.e., Reuben, Cuban, Cheeseburger) and “Minnesota” Mexican fare (loaded nachos with housemade salsa, cheese-smothered burritos). Some online commenters can be harsh. (“Their pizza is absolute zhit.”) But Zorbaz fare is a cut above what’s served at the average outstate watering hole. Even that questionable peanut-butter pizza was proclaimed “not as stupid as I thought it would be” by one recent diner.

Zorbaz may be less about the food than the attitude. But the concept never would have endured, much less been reproduced, if Minnesotans didn’t like it. “Zorbaz is one of those things in life that doesn’t need the internet or the NYT sticking their noses into it,” one commenter wrote. “It’s Minnesota’s. We don’t need the world to understand or approve it. We love it for what it is, and we forgive it for what it’s not.”

Over the decades, Zorbaz has made a few tweaks. Liquor and live music arrived in the 1990s, conjuring a nightlife scene that’s hard to find in small towns. (Though dancers had to sweat it out for years until Zorbaz upgraded its HVAC, Cole said. “This is wild to think about now, but we didn’t have air conditioning in any of our locations until 2005.”)

It also has dialed back its former PG-13 raunch for the post-MeToo era. There was once a drink called Sex with the Bartender (description: “garnish with phone number”). But it’s no longer on the menu as Zorbaz has “slightly evolved out of those types of marketing messages,” Cole said, noting that he’d “refined a few things” from his dad’s tenure.

Zorbaz customers may not go home with the bartender, but they do keep coming back. Again and again, generation after generation, until their drawers are stuffed with Zorbaz sweatshirts, and their cupboards are jammed with its souvenir cups.

Among the most devoted Zorbaz fans are the thousands who have had their “pazzport” stamped at every location (receiving a surprise reward with the final stamp). Some have completed the “Z Tour” in a weekend. If you spend less than 15 minutes in each location, you can finish it in a day. (“I don’t recommend it,” Cole said. “But it is possible, and it happens.”)

Midwest celebrities are occasionally spotted at Zorbaz. Olympian Kristi Yamaguchi and her NHLer husband, Bret Hedican, reportedly celebrated his Stanley Cup win at Zorbaz. (Cole, for his part, refrains from name-dropping VIP visitors and insists everyone gets the Josh Duhamel treatment.) Rather than the famous, it’s far more common to encounter second- or third-generation Zorbaz fans, because the restaurants have been around long enough that couples who met at Zorbaz have toasted their 50th anniversaries there.

Lori and Wes Holmberg of Spicer have been regulars at the Green Lake Zorbaz since it opened in 2012. “In a small town, you don’t really have many choices of where to go out to eat, so we just started going to Zorbaz,” Lori said. They kept coming back, she added, because of the friendly, attentive staff, the kid-pleasing game area, the live music and beautiful lake view.

In 2020, the Holmbergs and two other couples used Zorbaz Pazzport Tour as an excuse for a four-day motorcycle trip. They snacked and sipped their way from east to west, ending at “their” Zorbaz. “It’s a good way to see a big chunk of Minnesota,” Wes said.

These days, the Holmbergs take their grandkids to Zorbaz. When their daughter learned she was pregnant, she told her parents to keep the news close — which Wes interpreted to include his barstool pals. “She said: ‘Only family,’ Lori recalled. “And he was like, ‘I told my Zorbaz family.’ " Their daughter retaliated with a custom hat she wore to Zorbaz that said: “Put it on my dad’s tab.”

Zealous Zorbaz fans eventually get jobs there. And the most zealous of zealous Zorbaz fans held their wedding reception there.

Ashley and Chris Walker are the only couple to have ever shut down Zorbaz for a private event. (Their boss at Zorbaz officiated.) Afterword, when Ashley was wearing a Zorbaz shirt on the couple’s honeymoon in New Zealand, a group of Minnesotans stopped them to rave about their hometown hangout. “We’re halfway across the world and here we’re talking about Zorbaz,” Ashley said. “Because if you know, you know.”

Ashley had discovered Zorbaz in college, visiting a friend’s cabin on Pelican Lake. Soon after, the Grand Rapids native got a summer bartending gig at the Pokegama location.

When she and Chris lived in the Twin Cities, in their early 20s, every time they visited her family, they ended up at Zorbaz. Drawn to the relaxed, playful “Zorbaz lifestyle” and camaraderie among the staff, they decided they might as well be on the other side of the bar. “There aren’t many places where you love spending so much time there that you’re like, ‘Well, maybe I should work here,’ ” Chris said.

The two took gigs at the Spicer Zorbaz and worked their way up to becoming owner-operators in Grand Rapids. A few years ago, when their eldest child entered elementary school, the Walkers reluctantly decided to pass the tiki torch. (“We couldn’t keep our kids on bar hours,” Ashley explained.) But the family’s relationship with Zorbaz is far from over.

“We already want our kids to work at Zorbaz,” Ashley said. “It runs really deep.”