The story behind Mama’s

Mama’s Mercantile + Eatery started out as just a market and food counter concept by our owner Petra. But after leaving the restaurant industry for a little bit of time to start her family, she realized that really, hospitality is what she loved the most. So, she decided to do both! While Mama’s is a full-service restaurant, we also have a small mercantile featuring many of the products we use in our food, as well as other Michigan made, grown, and raised items.  

Michigan made and homemade are our two favorite things. We are blessed enough to live in the second most agriculturally diverse state, so great product and fresh ingredients are never too far away. As often as we can we will use Michigan made, grown and raised items on our menu and do our best to make or locally source everything you see on our menu. 

The restaurant menu was derived from Petra’s favorite place to eat - the home she grew up in. She was lucky enough to grow up in a house where great meals were always on deck, whether it be at the dining table on a Tuesday night, around the kitchen island with friends and family listening to Otis Redding on a fall Friday evening, snacking on the back patio during the summer months, or in the dining room for the most epic of Thanksgiving dinners. Of all the restaurants she has dined at and cities she has traveled to, the food and company and feeling that came along with walking into her parents kitchen couldn’t be beat.

That feeling of home is what Mama’s aims to duplicate. We are here for the good days, the bad days, the celebrations, the hard times, to be a shoulder, to be a quiet place, an escape from your own house without ever feeling away from home.

We are here to remind you that life is a balance of crazy and sometimes mundane, but that there is beauty in it all. Never forget — 

There’s magic in the messy.