Milli

✨Our To Go Room and Toast Pre-Order is Open! ✨

It’s a small shift with a simple purpose, to make things move a little more gently for everyone. If you’re grabbing coffee and a pastry to go, you’ll now have a dedicated space, quicker ordering, shorter wait times, and a clearer path through the morning rush. You can pick up your to go orders at the Kedzie facing entrance to the side of the main entrance. Your pastries will be waiting for you and your drink will be made as soon as you get here.

Inside, this also opens us up to something we’ve been moving toward for a while, more attentive service, a shorter line.

Alongside it, we’re adding things you can take with you, loaves of bread, overnight oats, parfaits, food made to hold you through the day, now available on toast for pre-order Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

We’ll meet you there.
-Milli

Friends!

We’ve started pouring vermouth on draft. We want it to become part of the rhythm of this place, something woven into afternoons and conversations, poured generously and often. A small glass beside a flaky pastry, something crispy, something rich.

There’s romance in rituals that don’t require an occasion. In aperitifs before dinner, in bitter things made soft, in treating vermouth less like something forgotten on a back bar and more like something alive, herbal, meant to be shared. It’s a philosophy we carry into our coffee service too, intentional, curious about the story behind what’s in the glass.

Our Vermouth & Rhubarb Creme has quietly become a staff favorite: cold herbal vermouth softened with a cloud of vegan rhubarb creme, both refreshingly bitter and lush, an ode to spring.

Come let us pour you one.

-Milli

✨Milli loves Moms✨

We love having you here with your children, laughing (or crying, that’s really ok) with chocolate covered faces in the dining rooms, fuzzy headed newborns dusted in croissant flakes, evidence of a meal eaten one handed.

It’s something we once only imagined, and now have the privilege of witnessing, every day, in this space. We love having you here on your own, a moment away, a pastry you don’t have to share and coffee you can drink, hot, till the bottom of the cup, you deserve it.

To celebrate Mother’s Day this year, Sunday May 10th, we’ll be hosting a diaper drive on behalf of . EveryMom provides comprehensive kits containing essential newborn, postpartum, and breastfeeding supplies. If you’re able, bring a package of unopened diapers, or wipes, any size.

We’ll pour you a drip on us.

-Milli

P.s. stay tuned this week for a very exciting announcement.

✨🚨We’re hiring for our Savory team. 🚨✨

To work in tandem with our pastry program as we evolve, deep reverence and respect for pastry and bread as the foundation is paramount.

We value curiosity, and a willingness to explore the intersections of every part of our cafe, coffee, pastry, wine and service. We’re looking for folks who can compliment the passion, care and intention of what has already been built here behind the scenes in our kitchen. If interested, send us a cover letter and your resume, to [email protected]

Weekdays: laptops away after 2pm.
Fridays, Weekends: no laptops.

A love letter, because we want to say it this way,

To you, who arrive already divided. Part of you here, part of you pulled taut somewhere else, inside a message, a deadline, a future that keeps asking for proof of your devotion. We recognize this. We often find ourselves inside it too.

What if you could sit at a table and belong to nothing but the hour you are in? The pastries we make do not wait for you to catch up, they are alive only at the insistence of a season, the grain, the orchard, the rain. The wines we pour are born from grapes tended in collaboration with seasonal and cosmic rhythms, guided by subtle human intuition, each bottle a map of its place, its year, its labor. The coffee travels continents, mornings begun before ours, processed and roasted to reveal structure, tension, clarity, body, to arrive in your hands fully expressed. All of this asks one thing: presence.

So, we make this gentle, unyielding request: after 2pm Monday - Thursday, let’s put the laptops away. Friday- Sunday, let the tables breathe free of them entirely. Not as a restriction, but as an offering. As a chance to meet what is here, what is fleeting, what requires you to be present.

You are allowed, even briefly, to be unclaimed by the world outside our door.

Love,
Milli

Friends!

Introducing the Kedzie Handshake.

Across cultures and time, people have marked transitions in the day with humble pairings, bread and beer, a whiskey and a pint, espresso with something sweet. Not just for sustenance, but for pause, for that moment between what was and what comes next.

Here on Kedzie Avenue, in the culturally rich neighborhood of Avondale, that feeling of transition is familiar. This street has always carried people between shifts, between roles, between versions of themselves.
The Kedzie Handshake lives in that in between.

A shot of rotating single origin espresso, a 6 oz draft beer, and a bite of something sweet. A small, steadying ritual. A transitional offering for the space between.

On your way home to a hungry family (whatever that means to you), stepping into your next class, or just before you clock in.

We’re here, on Kedzie,
Stop by. Say hi. Shake hands.

Our kitchen is expanding!

We’re looking for bakers who are passionate about bread, viennoiserie, and pastry, and ideally have experience on the savory line. If sourcing, technique, and curiousity for the unconventional excite you, we want to hear from you.

Apply through the link in our profile.

We’re Hiring!

We’re looking for an AM Café Lead who is passionate about coffee, someone who loves working with carefully sourced, direct trade varietals and takes pride in every cup served.

You’ll lead our morning program, create specialty seasonal beverages, guide guests through the coffee experience, and support a team that cares as much about quality and service as you do.

If you’re energized by great coffee, food and wine, enjoy creating smooth mornings for both guests and your team, this is your role.

Follow the link in bio to apply.

Coffee, of course, but also wine, beer, new cocktails, and a small menu of plates.

Warm olives and marinated cheese, a velvety seasonal dip with crackers, and quite possibly the best chicken liver mousse we’ve ever had, served with our beloved Milli spelt brioche, now toasted.

Stop by, say hi! We can’t wait to see you!

Thursday - Monday, 3-6pm

Spring in the Midwest rarely arrives all at once. It moves like weather here tends to move, in flashes and reminders. A cold morning that still feels like winter. A sudden seventy degree afternoon that sends the city delirious, high on sunshine and the promise of heat. Long gray rains that could just as easily belong to fall. For a few weeks, the whole year seems to pass through at once.

A café lives in those seasons too, carrying what came before, working in the moment we’re in, and curiously exploring what might come next.

We’re pouring three drinks that mark a moment in time.

Espresso Cream Soda:
Espresso, sparkling soda, vanilla and cream. Reaching back in time to a classic our community has previously enjoyed.

Strawberry Thyme Latte:
Strawberry, herbal thyme, and espresso. Shared moments stretched across the city at the same time. A taste of the present, a drink in parallel reality, from Kara at our Fulton shop and arriving here, alive in two places at once.

Passionfruit & Coriander Iced Tea:
Bright passionfruit, coriander and Spirit Tea’s Crescent Green Tea, acid ripe excitement for summer gatherings, future gardens abundant with herbs.

Friends!

As panes of afternoon light lengthen and fill the café, we extend our hours to follow them.

Starting this week, we’re open until 6pm, Thursday through Monday, more time for whimsical pastries, expressive wines, and coffee sourced, roasted, and brewed with intention, all for the moments that invite connection.

We’re also unveiling our by the full by the glass program: a playful collection of natural, low-intervention wines, field blends and intriguing varietals, reds and whites brimming with life, chosen for their spark, the stories they tell, and the subtle discoveries they reveal to those who pay attention.

Alongside the BTG menu, we’ve composed a few small plates, ready to meet whatever glass you hold, dishes layered with flavor and texture, conceived to harmonize with wine, coffee, or simply the unfolding afternoon.
We’ve felt your anticipation, and this is just the beginning.

There’s more to come, and we can’t wait to share what continues to inspire us as the afternoons grow long and radiant.

—Milli

Valentine’s Day at Milli

Surprise! Inspired by love, we’re opening bottles that feel a little electric. The flirty ones. The lush ones. The “who brought this?” ones. Expect pours that are aromatic, generous, maybe a little dramatic in the glass. Just for tomorrow, we’ll have a limited BTG menu. We’re excited to share what we’ve been tasting in preparation for our regular wine service, and curious what you like too.

Love, after all, is chemistry.
Fermentation.
Time and pressure doing something beautiful.

We’ll have flowers from forDreams lining the bar, special pastries coming warm from the oven, and bon bons, chocolate as punctuation. Coffee too, steady as ever.

Bring your person, your friends, or just yourself, let us pour you something lovely.