The vast restaurant space on the ground floor of an apartment building beneath the Ben Franklin Bridge in, which opened last month, plush seating and a coffee table fashioned from a steamer trunk are set up beneath the stacks. A small room to one side offers turntables and headphones. In the rear is a coffee counter and service bar.
The business has grown largely through word-of-mouth, Doran said. “It was just a lot of locals, friends, and grassroots marketing,” he said. “I think it’s just been people falling in love with a kid that had no business opening up a coffee shop and cafe, and no experience in the restaurant industry besides selling booze.”The breakfast, lunch, and coffee menus are full of twists.
After eight years in the liquor industry, “I got exhausted from that scene,” he said. He moved to Asia in 2019, making his way to Vietnam and Thailand. “I worked on a coffee farm and got into the lifestyle and culture that’s really big in the Eastern Hemisphere,” he said. “It’s not a fast grab-and-go. It’s more of a ‘come in, have coffee, sit down, enjoy, speak to whoever’ and really take it all in.