Customer Spotlight
Keeping Kosher in Milwaukee
Mordechai Bates welcoming neighbors to QuickKosher
Mordechai Bates was applying to med schools when he found another way to serve his community. After decades of operation, Milwaukee’s last remaining kosher grocery store, Kosher Meat Club, had closed it doors; Milwaukee’s Jewish community was left to either manage with a few offerings from chain stores or drive to Chicago for provisions. Mordechai stepped up. What started in 2019 as kosher milk delivery out of his car is now Milwaukee’s only all-kosher grocery store, QuickKosher.
“I had an aptitude and time to kill,” Mordechai says, when he was approached about filling the kosher foods void. Though he had no retail experience, he thought he’d have a go. “I had no idea what I was doing…No one told me what I was supposed to do was not possible. Because I didn’t know it wasn’t possible, I just went and did it.”
"[A local kosher grocery store] allows people to keep their traditions and their lifestyle alive while still being a part of this great city..."
Five years later, QuickKosher operates out of a mixed-use building on Milwaukee’s North Side. After renting the space for two years, in December of 2023, Mordechai and his silent partners purchased the building, with help from MEDC. Mordechai says the store not only serves the Jewish population, but the neighborhood, even people in the apartments above the store. “There’s not a grocery store in that area,” he says. “Here, people can get everything they need at affordable prices.” In addition to the in-person shopping experience QuickKosher offers online ordering for pick up or delivery.
Milk is still a staple, and now QuickKosher is known for their broad range of meat and poultry options and their variety of kosher products in general, including a full line of Israeli products that are hard to find in the U.S. “People coming from New York are impressed,” Mordechai says. “One woman said, ‘Your store is the size of one aisle at home, but you have everything I need.’”
Kosher snacks like kosher Doritos, other chips and cookies are a hit. Mordechai’s own weakness lies elsewhere. He says, with a chuckle, that one of the benefits to owning your own grocery store is being able to help customers while digging into a container of ice cream.
While the majority of QuickKosher’s customers come from the neighborhood, people also come from the East Side, Mequon and as far as Madison. “[A local kosher grocery store] allows people to keep their traditions and their lifestyle alive while still being a part of this great city and not having to move or take their money to other cities,” Mordechai says. It is the relationships with and service to those people that he says is the best part of the job.
Aisles of kosher snacks and more
QuickKosher is located at 4833 W Burleigh St., Milwaukee. Learn more about the store and shop online.