East Main Kitchen & Coffee set to open in Baltic
Mark Miller, (right) who owns East Main Kitchen & Coffee in Baltic, along with J. Mark Miller, is pictured with Darryl Miller, general manager and chef in the totally refurbished and renovated restaurant. Mark Fortune | Beacon
BALTIC – East Main Kitchen & Coffee is set to open in Baltic on May 1. The former Millers Dutch Kitchen has been purchased and the renovations are complete with a bent toward Chip and Joanna Gaines including the shiplap. Mark Miller and his wife Maureen, who co-owns the business along with J. Mark Miller, and wife Martha, said, “We were pushing the idea of having a coffee shop in Baltic but it would be hard to make a cash flow with Baltic the size it is. And we didn’t want the coffee shop to make a struggling restaurant a failing restaurant. But we always wanted to do a coffee shop slash restaurant.”
“Originally we thought we could make some minor changes and keep going. We soon realized that it is a longer, deeper process. My wife (Maureen) and I decided to buy the real estate and we hooked up with J. Mark Miller and his wife Martha as a partner in the restaurant piece of it.”
“The why is that Baltic needs a restaurant and coffee shop to be a community, just a nice place for the community to come together and connect. We also want it to be a place for our employees to work in a positive and good environment.”
“I’m the principal of a Christian school and felt that our community needed a place, a place for young kids to plug into. This can be a great place for older kids to work. We also care a lot about the kingdom of God.”
“We want a place that helps and gives back to the community as well as provide funds for mission work around the world. We see the profits – the majority of the profits going back into the mission field – especially orphan care. We really care about orphans so we want that to be a central part of what we do here.”
“The menu will be very similar to what Miller’s Dutch Kitchen was. I say it is Amish food with a flair. A little bit more Mennonite than Amish food. We’ll still have the broasted chicken, the mashed potatoes, roast beef and Manhattan sandwiches but we’ll also have a burger grilled on the Green Egg on charcoal. We’ll have a Reuben made with corned beef brisket on the Green Egg. It will be an Amish restaurant with some barbecue flair.”
“We’re starting with a staff of six and hope to double that in the next few weeks as we feel our way into it. We think we will need a staff of 15 to 20 with about 10 people being full time and the others part-time.”
You can’t think about a restaurant in Amish country without pie coming to mind. Miller said, “We’ll have fresh pies baked daily – we will have a bakery in house – we’ll have fruit pies, cream pies, pecan, etc. Our plan later on is to bake our own bread and pastries. We’ll have biscotti for the coffee bar. We’ll be a full service restaurant. All of our sandwich buns will be homemade.”
“I have to give kudos to my wife Maureen on the decorating. She is a designer and loves to do it. You can see her handprint all over it. She would take a picture to J. Mark (Miller) who is a trim carpenter and he would design what she wanted.”
“When you come in you’re going to think farmhouse. We have shiplap in here, old barn doors, half round gutters on the outside. Think farmhouse and strong Chip and Joanna Gaines flavor. It really looks like a fixer upper restaurant. A little bit of retro but a comfortable, open and inviting look is what we wanted.”
The 130 seat restaurant will be open for breakfast, lunch and dinner with a full service menu from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Saturday and closed Sunday. A coffee bar will be open starting at 6 a.m. and closing at 9 p.m. with iced coffees, espressos, pour overs and teas. The coffee bar will feature a limited menu of items from the 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. time frame. And yes, the restaurant is located on Main Street in Baltic.
Category: Business
