Cocktail reception
Passed and stationed hors d’oeuvres with full bar service. Guests stay on their feet and the room keeps moving.
Best for mingling
Milwaukee · Southeastern Wisconsin
Catering that’s cooked at your venue.
Other companies cook your wedding dinner in a kitchen across town and drive it to you. That food can sit in a hot box in the back of a box truck for three or four hours before anyone eats it. We bring the kitchen instead. Your mains and sides are cooked on site, in our mobile kitchen, by our own chefs.
- Cooked at your venueNot driven over in a hot box
- One team, not three vendorsOur chefs, our servers, our bartenders
- Milwaukee, since 2014Part of Cream City Concepts
Who we are
A Milwaukee caterer that brings the kitchen with it.
Cream City Catering is a full-service catering company in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and part of the Cream City Concepts hospitality group. We cater weddings, corporate events and social gatherings across southeastern Wisconsin, and we cook mains and side dishes on site at your venue in a mobile kitchen instead of reheating them after a truck ride.
That one decision changes almost everything downstream. Proteins come off heat minutes before they are served instead of holding in a hot box. Vegetables keep their texture. Sauces do not break waiting for the toast to finish. And because our chefs are already standing in your venue, a timeline that slips by twenty minutes is a conversation rather than a crisis.
The same team handles the kitchen, the floor and the bar, so there is one group accountable for how the night runs — not three vendors pointing at each other.
The difference
What “cooked on site” actually means
A mobile kitchen is a fully equipped cooking line we set up at your event — not a warming station. Our chefs fire mains and finish sides there, in the same window your guests are being seated.
Ask any caterer you are considering one question: where will my entrées be cooked, and how long will they hold before they reach the table? Cooked across town, loaded into hot boxes, driven out, staged, then plated, and the honest answer is three to four hours. Chicken that has held that long is not the chicken you tasted. For us the same answer is measured in minutes, because the line is parked at your venue.
Service styles
Four ways to feed a room, and two lighter ones
Service style shapes the whole evening: the budget, the timeline, the room layout and how much your guests actually talk to each other. Four styles come with our crew on site. Two more are for events that do not need one.
Buffet
Chef-attended lines with mains and sides finished on site. The most range per dollar, and the easiest on picky eaters.
Best for range
Plated dinner
Coursed and individually plated, served to seated guests. The most formal, the most controlled, and the most staff.
Best for formality
Family style
Shared platters brought to each table. Guests pass the food, and the table starts talking before the first course is done.
Best for warmth| Style | How it works | Typical guest count | Relative cost | Time at table |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cocktail reception | Hors d’oeuvres passed by servers plus stationed displays; guests stand. | 25–300+ | Lowest per guest | Shortest — no seated meal |
| Buffet | Guests serve themselves from chef-attended lines; mains finished on site. | 40–400+ | Moderate | Medium — released by table |
| Plated dinner | Each course plated in the mobile kitchen and served to seated guests. | 40–250 | Highest — most service staff | Longest — coursed |
| Family style | Shared platters delivered to each table; guests pass and serve. | 40–200 | Moderate to high | Long — but social |
Guest-count ranges are typical, not limits. If your event sits outside them, ask, because the answer is usually yes.
Two lighter options, when you do not need a crew
Not every event wants servers in the room. These two are the same kitchen and the same food, without the front of house.
Drop-off catering
We cook it, we deliver it, we set it out in disposable or rented pans, and we leave. You handle the rest. Best for office lunches, meetings, showers and anything where the room runs itself.
Pick-up catering
Order ahead, collect it from us, take it where it is going. The least expensive way to feed a group from our kitchen, and the one with the most flexibility on timing.
Neither of these is cooked on site, for the obvious reason. If the food matters more than the logistics, the four styles above are the ones to look at.
What we cater
Weddings, corporate and everything in between
Wedding celebrations
We build the dinner out of the mobile kitchen and onto your guests’ tables, and you work directly with our planning team from menu tasting through the last plate cleared. Our job on the day is to make the food a thing you enjoy rather than a thing you manage.
Corporate gatherings
Board lunches, client events, holiday parties and corporate galas. Predictable timing, clean presentation and invoicing your finance team will not fight you about.
Social events
Milestone birthdays, anniversaries, graduations, showers and the kind of backyard party that quietly turns into a hundred people. Same kitchen, same crew, scaled to the room.
Bar service
Our bartenders come from our own restaurants, so the bar is not an afterthought bolted onto the food. Beer, wine and full cocktail packages are quoted with the menu.
From our kitchens
The food
Dishes from our own kitchens and events. The full catering menu — party starters, salads, mains, sides and stations — lives on the menu page.
Not ready to talk to anyone yet?
We built a free planning guide: a budget calculator that shows where the money actually goes, a month-by-month timeline you can tick off, and the seven questions worth asking every caterer, us included. No email address needed.
We also do the rehearsal dinner and the buses
The night before, at Oak Barrel or wherever you are holding it. And shuttles and party buses to get everyone to the venue and home again, booked with the same person who plans the food.
Who you will be working with
Two people, start to finish.
Cream City Catering is part of the Cream City Concepts group, which also runs Oak Barrel Public House, Who’s on Third and Who’s on Layton. You are not handed off down a chain here. The person who quotes your event is the person who plans it, and one of them is on the phone the week of.
Alexa Gruenwald
Director of Sales, Events & Marketing
262‑894‑8461
[email protected]
Alexa went to school for radiology. It did not take, and the part it clarified was the part underneath it: she wanted work that put her in front of people who needed something from her. She has spent the years since finding out that hospitality is that work.
She has been in restaurants, events and hotels since 2012, and joined Cream City Catering in June 2026 as Director of Sales, Events and Marketing. In practice she answers your first message and she is still holding the plan on the day itself. Most of the job in between is keeping sales, the kitchen and operations working from one version of your event rather than three, which is unglamorous and is the whole difference between a day that runs and a day that does not.
Ask her why she likes it and she talks about the days themselves. People hire us for the ones they will remember for the rest of their lives. That is a serious thing to be handed, and she does not treat it as anything less.
Reid Frederickson
Manager of Sales, Events & Marketing
262‑332‑3005
[email protected]
Reid is the person you talk to first and the person still answering on the day.
He carries an event from the first inquiry through to the last plate cleared, working between the client, the kitchen and the operations crew so that all three are holding the same plan. Most of what he does is unglamorous and decisive: getting the timeline agreed before anyone is under pressure, catching the detail that would otherwise surface at six o'clock on the night, making sure the chef and the client mean the same thing by the same word.
He also runs the marketing for Cream City Catering, which puts him in an unusual position. He writes what you read before you book, then stands in the room while it either holds up or does not. That tends to keep the writing honest.
Reid studied Marketing at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. He works on the view that a good event starts as a real conversation and that nothing on the day should be a surprise to anyone.
Request a quote
Tell us about your event.
Send the details and we will come back with a real proposal — menu, staffing and bar — not a brochure.
Prefer to talk it through? Call Alexa direct on 262-894-8461 or email [email protected]. She runs sales and events, so you are talking to the person who will actually plan your day.
The five things that let us quote fastest: your date, guest count, venue, service style and whether you need bar service. If you do not know all five yet, send what you have.
Questions
Frequently asked
What is Cream City Catering?
Cream City Catering is a full-service catering company based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and part of the Cream City Concepts hospitality group. We cater weddings, corporate events and social gatherings, and we cook mains and side dishes on site at your venue using a mobile kitchen rather than reheating food after transport.
What does “cooked on site” actually mean?
We bring a mobile kitchen to your event location and cook there. The alternative, which is what most caterers do, is cooking in a kitchen across town and holding the food in hot boxes in a truck, often for three to four hours between the stove and the table. Ours is measured in minutes.
What service styles do you offer?
Four full-service styles: cocktail reception with passed and stationed hors d’oeuvres; buffet with chef-attended lines; plated dinner served by course; and family style, where shared platters are brought to each table. We also do drop-off and pick-up catering for events that do not need a crew on site. The right choice depends on guest count, timeline and how much table service the venue can support.
What areas do you serve?
Milwaukee and southeastern Wisconsin, including Milwaukee, Waukesha, Ozaukee, Washington and Racine counties. Events outside that radius are quoted case by case — ask us.
How do I get a catering quote?
Call 414-897-8320, email [email protected], or use the quote request form on this page. Quotes are built from guest count, date, venue, service style and bar needs, so having those five details ready speeds things up considerably.
Do you provide bartenders and service staff?
Yes. We staff events with our own chefs, servers and bartenders, so one team is accountable for the kitchen, the floor and the bar.
Get in touch
Let’s dig in.
Every enquiry goes straight to Alexa. You will not be handed between four people before anyone can answer a question about your date.
Main line
Office
1033 N Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, Suite 600
Milwaukee, WI 53203