MADISON – Madison Hillel has converted its meat-based restaurant into a dairy coffee shop, now serving Caribou Coffee.
The now-coffee shop, and a growing catering and delivery business that serves meat from a separate kitchen, are together called Adamah Neighborhood Table. It’s all operated by Madison Hillel. The restaurant-turned-cafe may have lost out to a trend among Jewish youth – less interest in the heavier Ashkenazi dishes enjoyed by their parents and grandparents.
“The college students on campus really aren’t looking for corned beef sandwiches and pastrami sandwiches. They love the matzo ball soup, but the beef sandwiches were never huge,” said David Bookstaff, director of operations for Madison Hillel. “They really wanted someplace they could hang out longer, and have lattes and coffee.”
But in a kosher meat-based restaurant, one can’t use milk or cream, which are staples of coffee shops. So the meat is out at the restaurant-turned-cafe space in the Madison Hillel lobby. Students can still order meat-based sandwiches, prepared in a kitchen on a different floor of the Madison Hillel building. But those meat sandwiches are not for consumption in the dairy cafe. The meat is for take-out or delivery.
It cost about $25,000 to convert the restaurant into a dairy cafe – paying for items like dairy utensils and pans – and the result has been an approximately 25-30% increase in sales, Bookstaff said. The former restaurant began operating as a dairy cafe in January.
Meanwhile, Adamah Neighborhood Table’s catering business, which can serve meat, is growing, Bookstaff said. It serves local corporate employers, university events, weddings, b’nei mitzvahs, and others who seek to serve visitors who keep kosher. This included catering a recent sports business conference. Adamah Neighborhood Table caters around 150 to 200 events each semester, which can have anywhere from five or six people having a meal to 100 people or more, Bookstaff said.
“The catering business is really growing,” Bookstaff said. The catering business fell to zero during the pandemic, then returned to pre-pandemic levels, and has now exceeded pre-pandemic sales.
There is also catering, in a sense, for one. Delivery is available. Also, visitors to the building can order a meat-based sandwich and eat at tables in the lobby, just outside the dairy coffee shop.
“While Madison doesn’t have a huge kosher community, we’re a common travel point between Milwaukee, Minneapolis and elsewhere,” Bookstaff said. “And we had a lot of people from Milwaukee or traveling through Milwaukee up to Minneapolis who will stop for lunch.”
Order at AdamahMadison.com.
* * *
* * *
Adamah Neighborhood Table
- Dairy coffee shop
- Meat catering
- Delivery within the Madison Hillel building or elsewhere
- Certified by Wisconsin K.
- Located at Madison Hillel, 611 Langdon St., Madison
Order at AdamahMadison.com. Call 608-441-1574.
Loading ...