The Hartbrook Cafe, Hartland WI

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