Things are happening behind the scenes to maintain and grow kosher services in the Milwaukee area.
Among the changes – Hannah’s Kitchen is now Mosaic Catering, after a change in ownership. Meanwhile, Milwaukee Jewish Federation is assisting the kosher food service with a new grant.
Hannah’s Kitchen has been rebranded as Mosaic Catering, and the company, previously owned solely by Hannah Sattler, has now become a business partnership between Sattler and Mordechai Bates.
Bates’ business, the QuicKosher grocery store on Milwaukee’s West Side, is continuing to function as a separate entity, not a part of Mosaic Catering, though there will be cooperation.
The former Hannah’s Kitchen, now Mosaic Catering, will continue to utilize a large kitchen space and operate Cafa B Data at the Harry and Rose Samson Family Jewish Community Center. The community is continuing to assist.
“The Milwaukee Jewish Federation is proud to provide a grant to support kosher food at the Harry and Rose Samson Family Jewish Community Center through the Cafa B Data by Mosaic Catering (formerly known as Hannah’s Kitchen),” according to a Milwaukee Jewish Federation statement. “We are grateful to work together with the JCC, our longtime partner agency, to ensure that kosher food remains available at a central gathering place for the Jewish community. All Milwaukee Jewish Federation funding decisions are made by its Board of Directors based on rigorous review and careful consideration.”
Bates said he is grateful: “Very generously, they have given us some money to help cover the rabbi fees, basically for kosher supervision, to help bring that cost down, so that … we can provide that great quality food, but not have to charge prices that we might otherwise charge.”
Sattler and Bates have worked together for years, as two of the principal people in Milwaukee’s kosher food space. Sattler has been a longtime customer of Bates.
“Maybe almost a year ago now, she was discussing with me some of the growth she wants to do and how she’s stretched, and she’s one person trying to do this monumental thing,” Bates recalled. “And I said, ‘Well, if you’re ever interested, I have bandwidth, and I love running businesses. I could take a chunk off your plate and we could, you know, do this together.’ So it took a while to kind of coalesce, but essentially, we’re joined together now. We’re rebranded.”
Bates said he will be more focused on the financial side of the business. Sattler said: “Honestly, I feel for me to be able to focus on the aspects of the business I need to, which is catering and building menus and partnerships and overseeing that whole aspect of the business – it’s hard to do all of that with all the other hats that I was wearing.”
“Things grew quite fast in the last four years, since we moved into the JCC,” she added.
Despite the growth, which he gives Sattler great credit for, Bates sees more opportunity. “I think that there’s a lot of growth potential in the Orthodox communities. Both because I grew up in that culture, and also because my friends, family, all my contacts, are in that world, I think that that allows me to pivot our business to better support and provide for that segment of the population,” he said.
Sattler, who lived on Milwaukee’s more observant West Side until she was 7 and now lives in the North Shore, agrees with that vision.
“One of the things I think that’s amazing about the Milwaukee Jewish community that you don’t see in bigger cities is that we are more interconnected between our secular through Orthodox parts of the community,” Sattler said. “And so I think showing that kind of unified front and us working together is kind of a great message to the general community.”
The name “Mosaic Catering” is, in part, a nod to Judaism and the name “Moses.” But, Bates said, it also “really represents our customers, our mosaic of life, the Jewish tapestry, and us – because we represent multifaceted sides of Judaism.”
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