Photo courtesy of Kinship Café
Kinship Café interior
Kinship Café interior
Opened in 2024, the café is a branch of the Kinship Community Food Center which began as the Riverwest Food Pantry in the 1970s and has been significant in helping the Milwaukee community since then. The Kinship Café is run and staffed through the food center’s workforce program. It is immersive and holistic, designed to get people back on their feet and platform them for future success. It helps those struggling with addiction, incarceration aftereffects, food insecurity, and many others in the Milwaukee community in need. The six-or-12-month programs include hours of hands-on culinary instruction to apply at the café. They also learn career development and financial and digital literacy, tools to help them succeed even after the program’s conclusion.
“We look at the reality of the city, the reality of the economy, the reality of people's lives and their pasts and their histories and their neighborhoods and find ways to dig deeper so that the same issues that affect their ability to have a job and support a family don't continue in perpetuity,” said Caitlin Cullen, Kinship’s director of food and community engagement.
Human Development
Photo courtesy of Kinship Café
Kinship Café employees prepare drinks and food
Kinship Café employees prepare drinks and food
In addition to these practical skills, the workforce members are given individual coaching and human development to benefit their mental health.
“It's hard to find self-worth, it's hard to find confidence in crisis, it's hard to breathe resilience into somebody so to spend that amount of time with an individual saying ‘you matter, you have skills, you can make it past this obstacle,’ and for us to be able to also participate in clearing those obstacles that are chronic issues is really meaningful,” said Cullen.
In service Monday through Friday, the café features breakfast sandwiches, burritos and parfaits to begin the day. Moving into lunch time, the menu includes a variety of flavorful bowls and salads, all fully customizable. Their chicken sandwiches are popular as well as other burrito and wrap options, often accompanied by regular or sweet potato fries. All served in generous portions and handmade by Kinship’s workforce program. The café also has a large drink menu throughout the day serving delicious coffees, teas, and more.
Affordable and Healthy
Photo courtesy of Kinship Café
Kinship Café chicken sandwich
Kinship Café chicken sandwich
Laquita Bell, a regular customer who has volunteered at Kinship’s food pantry enjoys the Mediterranean salad, sweet potato fries, and seasonal soups. She’s drawn to the café for their affordable healthy food, something that can be hard to come by in the surrounding area.
The ThriveOn King building is home to many other local businesses whose employees frequent the café. Bell said that when she visits, she sees Kinship as a community space for these businesses and many other Milwaukee locals. It benefits not just the participants of the workforce program but the city as a whole. Corinne Pittman, a fan of That Tandem Sandwich agreed, calling the café a representation of “#Smallwaukee.” In other words, there’s always familiar faces.
By helping the members of the workforce program, Kinship hopes to help the city at large, enacting what Madelinne Grey, Kinship’s communications manager, called “ripple effects,” of community and belonging.
“We are there to support you from every angle. Then we will see people who are nourished and who belong and who prosper,” said Grey. “By investing in people, you create the kind of community that you want to see in the world.”
