Beans & Barley

About me:

A neighborhood "specialty" grocery store for the East Side and greater Milwaukee, where you can find everything you need — from fresh produce to "fresh" greeting cards, imported shortbread to organic frozen dinners, and from wine to fresh-squeezed carrot juice!

An "all-homemade" deli, whose soups, desserts and vegetarian specialties (consistent award-winners) — are waiting to be taken home to dinner, seven days a week.

It's a health food store with hundreds of products — vitamins, supplements and food products, bath and body-care items, homeopathies, books — and a staff of people that can help you find what you need.

The restaurant seats eighty people, serving breakfast, lunch and dinner seven days a week, with a menu of good, healthy homemade food — including vegetarian and non-vegetarian specialties, beer and wine.

A Brief History of Beans

Started by Mike Stevens (now of Atlanta) as a small neighborhood health-food store with a half-dozen crocks for bulk goods and two coolers, Beans added slowly to its list of products as customers requested. Throughout the years of changes (Mike has been succeeded by his first partner, Lynn, and her three partners, Patty, Peg, and Pat) the company has maintained its steady commitment to two principles: quality and value. Whether in fresh produce or groceries, in any of the hundreds of items from our own kitchen or in a line of vitamins, we offer quality products, fairly priced.>BR>

In 1979, believing that, just like everyone else, "health-food" shoppers would appreciate quick, hot food in the middle of a busy day, we started serving food. The food was good, people stopped in to shop AND eat, and today the Deli — and the 80-seat Cafe — are among the busiest spots on the East Side.

Early in the summer of 1993, we really became the hottest spot on the East Side, when a spectacular blaze (fireballs and everything!) drove the lunch-hour crowd into the street, and left us with just the foundation and one usable wall. Over the next year and a half, we developed our plans, secured financing and by late Fall of 1994, standing in exactly the same spot where the old building had stood, we opened the doors to a brand-new Beans & Barley.