Atlanta’s BeltLine has its first kosher coffeehouse. Milk & Maple Coffeehouse soft-opened in mid-October on the ground floor of Chabad Intown, directly alongside the Eastside Trail across from Ponce City Market, with a grand opening set for Sunday, November 1.
Everything on the menu is kosher, down to the chalav Yisrael dairy and pat Yisrael baked goods, operating under the supervision of the Atlanta Kashruth Commission. Getting kosher ingredients to Atlanta was the project’s biggest obstacle, with much of the food sourced from outside Georgia. Customers can grab coffee and pastries from an outdoor ordering window four feet from the trail or settle inside, where the cafe offers comfortable workspaces, abundant outlets, high-speed Wi-Fi, and shelves of books. A new walking path connects the BeltLine directly to the building, and close to 200,000 people pass the entrance every month.
“I wanted a cup of coffee that could compete with any other coffee shop in the area, and pricing that’s the same as non-kosher places,” says Berri Dworcan, Milk & Maple’s launch manager.
Eight Years in the Making
Rabbi Eliyahu and Dena Schusterman founded Chabad Intown in 1997 and moved the center into its 21,000-square-foot building directly on the trail in 2018. Plans for a food business took shape soon after, first as Israeli-style restaurants run by outside operators. The pandemic put those plans on hold for two years, and a later coffeehouse operator backed out, unwilling to close on Shabbat, so the Schustermans decided to do it themselves. The roughly $500,000 project took off in late 2024, with the Schustermans’ daughter, Mira Levy, drawing up the initial menu, sales projections, and design.
More Than a Coffee Stop
Dworcan, a Montreal native, found his model this summer at a kosher coffeehouse connected to Chabad of Westmount, where the emissary behind it told him that serving kosher food is an accomplishment in its own right. Milk & Maple’s space reflects that mission: a tefillin stand has already seen use from customers who spotted it on their own, and flyers for Chabad Intown’s classes and programs line the walls. The Eastside Trail, the first completed stretch of what will become a 22-mile loop linking 45 neighborhoods, drew more than 2 million visitors in 2023 alone.
Milk & Maple Coffeehouse is located at 730 Ponce de Leon Place, Atlanta, GA 30306, on the Eastside Trail of the Atlanta BeltLine. Hours are Sunday through Friday, 7am to 3pm; the coffeehouse is closed on Shabbat.
H/T Chabad.org
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