It’s a place where many call “home.” Right off the highway
and along Hartbrook Drive, sits Hartbrook Café and also sits a handful of local
residents. Owner Barb Kurmenacher and her staff refer to these customers as
their “regulars,” although they are far from regular. The regulars have their
own personalized coffee mugs and have learned to know and appreciate the story
behind two one-of-a-kind murals that makes this café home.
It is Lauren Aljubouri’s beautifully crafted artwork. In
2008, Lauren was entering her college years at UW-Milwaukee’s Peck School of
the Arts. Lauren worked at the Hartbrook Café as a waitress all throughout her
four years of high school. She would come back home and still help out waitressing
on the weekends, while adding her flair to the bare white walls.
The murals include old-fashioned malts for twenty-five cents
and two characterized chefs with an extended line of characterized pancakes,
eggs, burgers, and fries. The name “Hartbrook Café” proudly streams across the
middle.
Vicki Nold is one who has worked in the kitchen for 8 years
and points out a stencil outline that extends out from the bottom of the mural.
“We won’t erase that line.” Nold says. “It’s a conversation
piece.”
Kurmenacher explains. “Lauren was going to do more but she’s
gone.” Her life and her murals were unfortunately cut short after she was
tragically killed by her boyfriend during her first year at Milwaukee.
“It makes me sad, but it is something we’ll always have of
her.” Nold adds. “She had an awesome talent and it’s a shame it was wasted.”
There is a tribute to Lauren’s artwork and life framed with
a photograph of her that hangs kindly next to the most important mural.
It read’s “Kurmenacher’s Special Orders for” and lists
several names of her first handful of regulars. Kurmenacher’s very first
customer, Bob is first on the list, followed by Nold and her husband, Kevin,
and 84-year old, Mal. The names are large on a painted scroll with a painting
characterized picture of Kurmenacher in her apron, holding a whisk.
Like any other standard café, it serves an early breakfast
and offers up the afternoon for lunch. Each table setting comes with already
set paper placemats and silverware. The menu has a wide arrangement of
breakfast plates and sandwiches that are proudly named after streets and
avenues in Hartland.
“You don’t find these restaurants anymore,” Kurmenacher
says.
When a customer first walks in, they have the option to hang
their coat up on the hooks by the door and can then help their self to a seat.
Customers can choose from about nine booths that cover each side wall, or they
can choose from about eight tables that are scattered throughout the middle.
There is also a U-shaped counter before the kitchen with 15 chairs around it.
Other than the clanking of forks and spoons and the soft chatter between the
booths; one can hear the echo of the radio being played in the kitchen with a
few shared laughs. And along with Lauren’s murals, three shelves hang on the
wall.
The shelves are packed with characterized, colorful, and
personalized mugs, whether it’s a Harley logo, Sylvester the cat, or a picture
of a dog. Kurmenacher says that it started with her buying around 20 of these
special mugs for a handful of her customers who kept coming back. She would
assign the mugs to them and her staff would quickly remember whose mug was
whose.
The shelf of 20 mugs started with Hartbrook Café and first
customer, Bob. Although Bob can’t drive himself in anymore due to age, his wife
is sure to get him in everyday to use his mug.
It’s been close to 20 years of business and the mugs have
expanded. Kurmenacher says there are about 95 mugs now, meaning 95 of the same
great “regulars” every day, for years.
“And their mad if they don’t get that cup.” She says.
Nold is positive it’s the breakfast that brings people back,
especially the hash browns.
“Everyone loves the hash browns.” She says. “You go some
place and people ask, what’s the secret to those hash browns?”
Nold assures that the hash brown secret will not be told,
and you’ll have to get them only at Hartbrook Café.
People start piling in when the open sign lights up the
front window.
Regular Mal, comes in every single morning at 6:00AM, ready
for his donut, his oatmeal, and his personal coffee mug. He has been coming in
for five years and the staff tries to make sure his mug is ready when he walks
through that door.
“I’ve got all the girls trained the way I want them. I could
never do that at home, so here I am!” Mal states.
Mal does say, “They broke two of my cups,” but the
waitresses just shrug and giggle, leaving Mal with his current mug—a grumpy
face cup with a handle. Mal calls the face “a little grouch.”
Kurmenacher says Mal is their “boyfriend and a ladies man; a
getter, for sure.”
“It’s my home away from home.” He adds.
The café usually staffs only 10 people on the floor and in
the kitchen, which is plenty to keep up with the Sunday morning rush after
church and is plenty enough to keep every customer smiling with a full cup of
coffee.
“The girls in the front handle the caffeine and the girls in
the kitchen handle the love.” Says Nold laughing.
But Kurmenacher admits that it’s not all easy. “Don’t get me
wrong, I get ugly at times. When we’re busy watch out!” guaranteeing that she
holds a dynamic business.
“We get in our little tiffs, but two minutes later, its back
to cheery and fun.” Nold adds.
Mal sees it from a different perspective. He says “the men
gossip more than the women” as a lot of hunting and fishing talk comes in.
“Teachers, bus drivers, you name it, we’ve got it!” Barb comments
with confidence.
With a successful family-oriented business, people sometimes
wonder why there is only one. But Kurmenacher says, “no way” to expanding Hartbrook
Cafe because it would take the uniqueness and thrill of downtown Hartland
away—it wouldn’t have the same murals.
Nold says, “It’s a small business, but we’re booming.”
It has gotten to the point where Kurmenacher’s regulars have
brought in their own Elkin and pork sausage from hunting; hoping that she will
cook something up.
“And I’ll do it for them. I’ll work with them.” She says.
Kurmenacher can add homemade pies for holidays and
occasional birthday cakes to the list. “This is what I do for people and that
makes them want to come back.”
It’s one thing to keep up a tidy café with great hash browns
and 95 personalized mugs, but Kurmenacher makes sure everyone who walks through
her door is happy.
“One of my customers actually had came and picked me up out
of the kitchen and was spinning me around the restaurant, because I wasn’t
giving him his way.” Kurmenacher laughs. “I can tell you what they eat every
single day.”
And as the day winds down at just two o’clock in the
afternoon, customers can find Mal sometimes finishing up his lunch, and Nold
knows why.
“It’s home away from home.” She says. “You can walk in here
and it’s comfortable; a café feeling where all your outside worries go away.”
Nold sees Hartbrook Café as one of those places from your
childhood that you just don’t forget—like Lauren and every regular who earned
their coffee mug and honor in the restaurant.
It may have taken a lot of hard work for Kurmenacher to put
so much heart in her Hartland café, but she says that, “the alarm doesn’t wake
me up to come here. I just get out of bed every morning.”
Every staff member and every person who walks in becomes a
part of Hartbrook Café’s family. One will find that out relatively soon after
choosing their seat. More and more people stop by in respects to Lauren and for
some legendary hash browns.
Nold promises, “We make sure everyone is taken care of
before the doors close.”
In Loving Memory, Wonder and Awe-
Carrie
