A new kind of shopping
Grocery sales at Milwaukee restaurants and bars will outlast the pandemic.
Bottles of wine, loaves of bread, steaks to cook for dinner at home — those kinds of new retail options at restaurants and bars that arose out of the pandemic won't end when the pandemic does.
Selling groceries started as a way to stay afloat in the age of COVID-19, but it's also a way for owners to diversify their businesses while supplying sometimes hardto-find food and drink to consumers for meals at home.
“The butcher shop will always stay; retail will always stay” at finedining Ardent, 1751 N. Farwell Ave., even if the number of offerings fluctuates, said Justin Carlisle. He's the chef-owner of Ardent and Red Light Ramen and co-owner with his wife, Lucia Muñoz, of the Laughing Taco.
Ardent (which now has a state meat-processing license, as does Red Light) sells cuts of Wagyu beef raised at the family farm in Sparta, like an 8-ounce flank steak for $7.50 or 16-ounce boneless rib-eye for $35. Everyday items such as ground beef for $8 a pound and beef hot dogs for $10 for eight are sold, as well. Ordering is online at ardentmke.com, under the Reservations button.
The restaurant also sells grocery items it’s made, such as beef-tongue pastrami at $8 for 4 ounces and cultured butter at $8 for 8 ounces, besides tinned imported seafood and caviar by the ounce.
Building on retail at Blue’s Egg
Some restaurants had a retail component well before the pandemic, such as Story Hill BKC on the west side, which from its beginning sold wine by the bottle as well as packaged beer.
“Retail in particular at Story Hill has really taken off,” said Dan Sidner, coowner with chef Joe Muench in Black Shoe Hospitality, which also operates the brunch restaurant Blue’s Egg and the Southern restaurant Maxie’s, both on the west side. Cocktail kits and the wine club have become popular there, he said.
Then late in 2020, the restaurant group began selling grocery items ordered online at blackshoehospitality.
com/store and picked up behind Blue’s
Egg.
The online store has cuts of meat, such as 14-ounce Duroc-breed pork loin chops for $8 and 12-ounce prime-grade Black Angus New York strip steaks for $20, plus a pound of Blue’s Egg’s pulled ham and four rolls made by the group’s bakery.
There are more bakery items — other types of rolls, including hot dog buns in four-packs, sourdough and other breads for $4 to $6, pies such as key lime for $18 or $20 and 6-inch layer cakes, like brown-butter spice for $24.
Black Shoe also started selling the barbecue and hot sauces that it already makes for its restaurants, under the South by North name.
The pandemic and recession forced owners to look at their businesses differently, Sidner said. Black Shoe was on pace for its biggest year ever in catering in 2020, he said, until the coronavirus came along.
Selling items like the hot sauces allows the company to use ingredients it already has and the flexibility to schedule production whenever convenient. And it’s something that doesn’t have to be sold immediately lest it go to waste, Sidner noted.
While some of the grocery stores are virtual, others have turned part of their restaurants and bars over to grocery shelves for the public to browse, if they like (although online ordering is available, as well).
Setting a vibe at Don’s Grocery
Don’s Grocery and Liquor in Walker’s Point, in space adjacent to what was Don’s Diner, opened quickly in March 2020 as the pandemic hit Milwaukee. The operators, who had considered including a market when they first developed the restaurant at 1100 S. First St., kept their eyes on the pandemic’s advance around the world and came up with their plan before the lockdown.
The store sold basics at first — it had toilet paper and disinfecting supplies when grocery stores did not, and carried pantry essentials.
It not only helped people in the neighborhood looking for those items, it provided “a way for our employees to keep coming to work,” said Sean Wille, spokesman for Stand Eat Drink hospitality group, which also operates Hotel Madrid and Movida.
“We got into a full-fledged grocery store business for a couple of months,” he said. At first, five shoppers at a time were allowed in, then the store added takeout with curbside pickup.
Supply chains to supermarkets improved, so what’s on the shelves at Don’s has changed with people’s shopping habits. Stock now is nostalgic snacks such as Hostess HoHos and cocktail kits, along with wine, beer and spirits. And the store sells novelty items — retro trading cards are $3 and up, to $695 for a 1982 Donkey Kong 36-pack box.
The store also turned out to be an efficient way to funnel the restaurant’s diner-ish takeout, like its Naughty Angel burger with cheese sauce and its elaborate boozy-or-not milkshakes, as well as meal kits.
Now, nearly a year after opening the store, Wille said, “This is something we will hold on to as a part of Don’s.”
The store is the portal to the attached Don’s TV Repair speakeasy, which opened in summer in the former Don’s Diner space and its back bar for weekend brunch, with rebuilt booths for privacy. So, the store sets a mood for customers arriving to dine in, as well as serving as takeout central.
The old Don’s Diner counted on its crowded, noisy energy to set the mood, where neighbors would greet neighbors at other tables. “That whole vibe is gone” during the pandemic, Wille noted.
Rare cheeses at Voyager
Voyager in Bay View, which opened as a bar serving cocktails and so-called natural wines, often from lesser-known varietals, turned its barroom into a store in October, and its owners have no plans to turn away from that.
Voyager had been serving customers drinks only outside in summer during the pandemic, switching to the store as winter approached.
In line with the off-the-beaten-path wines, which it also sells through a wine club, the store sells a changing selection of harder-to-find cheeses, including one coated in dried Alpine blossoms and the seasonal Vacherin Mont d’Or that’s wrapped in spruce bark. The rarest cheeses can approach $50 a pound, although most are less; they’re typically cut into one-third or one-half pound pieces, unless they’re small cheeses.
It also sells other items that go with wine, such as imported cured meats, tinned seafood and olives, pâtés from EsterEv restaurant in the Third Ward and mustards and pickled onions made in the Voyager kitchen. The bar is considering selling glassware down the line.
Voyager isn’t only keeping its retail space, it’s eyeing an outdoor expansion, a weekend market in summer that adds produce, baked goods and cut flowers. A recently acquired 27-food awning will stretch over the sidewalk to shelter sellers and customers from sun or a light rain.
“It’s my goal to have a presence on the corner that just looks alive and fresh,” Jordan Burich said, imagining a sidewalk market that would look at home in New York or Paris. Burich owns the bar at 422 E. Lincoln Ave. at South Allis Street with Micah Buck and Kathryn Lochmann.
Eventually, Voyager will have some seats at the bar and at windows to sip cocktails, wine and beer, but it intends to keep the display of snacks and wines for customers who want a snack with their drink, or who decide to take home a bottle of the wine they liked by the glass.
Sales dropped off after the holidays, as people resolve to lose weight and save money. “We’re in the business of alcohol and fatty foods,” Burich acknowledged. “That’s fine; we’ve got the rest of the year for vice.”
He noted that sales of sparkling wine, however, remain strong. “Sparkling wine is going to sell all year round, no matter what,” he said.
Why would that be?
“I think we’re just all really stressed out, and people want to hear that little pop. For 25 ounces, you can feel like you’re having a really good time,” Burich said, jokingly adding, “That’s why I do it, anyway.”
Contact dining critic Carol Deptolla at carol.deptolla@jrn.com or (414) 2242841, or through the Journal Sentinel Food & Home page on Facebook. Follow her on Twitter at @mkediner.