Restaurant merch goes beyond the brand T-shirt

Herman’s Coffee is an unassuming brick cafe in Pennsport that offers the standard slate of trendy drinks, like espresso tonics and Vietnamese-style lattes. It also sells a “custom made, synthetic leather” red basketball for $70 and an ashtray screen-printed with spaghetti and meatballs from local artist Liz Colyar for $65.

Farther south, Mish Mish, the scene-y, Mediterranean-y restaurant in East Passyunk, offers not just a branded tote for $38, but a $28 “Mish Mish x Particle Goods” candle that smells like the restaurant’s bathroom and a $160 Mish Mish x All Play garment-dyed chore shirt embroidered with apricots (the restaurant’s namesake, in Arabic).

From Fishtown to Rittenhouse, it’s hard to walk around now without spotting someone repping a neighborhood haunt, classic dive bar, or twee new cafe on a shirt, baseball cap, or even rolling papers. But as restaurants increasingly take cues from the wider fashion industry, restaurant merch has risen to new heights of quirk and style.

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At the same time, in Philly, restaurant merch continues to serve the same purpose it always has: supporting restaurants, fostering community, and fulfilling a desire to express your identity.

“It all adds up: we need to have a good aesthetic in the shop, good food, kind employees, and merch,” says Matt Cahn, owner of Middle Child, which recently did a 30-item “drop” of tees honoring their seasonal BLT. “I think people just expect a lot more out of a restaurant now than they used to.”

In one sense, the concept of restaurant merch is as old as restaurant branding itself. Every deli or pizza shop makes shirts for their employees, said Johnny Zito, who owns the East Passyunk apparel shop South Fellini with his Legends of Philadelphia podcast cohost Tony Trov. Branded shirts are “just part of the aesthetic of being a corner store in Philly,” said Zito. His business partner Trov still wears a red tee from Pat-George & Sons — the butcher shop his grandfather owned at 11th and Wolf Streets until it closed in 1987.

Rick Cao, who co-owns streetwear store P’s & Q’s and the Vietnamese restaurant Le Viet, thinks something started to shift in 2010. That’s when his friends in California began begging him to ship tie-dyed Wawa Hoagiefest T-shirts across the country. The shirts (and their retro hoagie mobile), Cao said, seemed to mark a moment when the line between fashion and food started to blur.

There are two preconditions for the current moment of all things food-as-fashion — which runs the gamut from cocktail-covered dresses and ketchup-shaped purses to tomato-printed everything — dominating the national trend cycle. Throughout the 2010s, major food brands began to capitalize on the fact that they were in the lifestyle business. By 2016, Taco Bell had opened a merch store on the Vegas Strip, followed by a McDonald’s “McDelivery Collection” in 2017 and a Dunkin’ pop-up shop in 2019 — predecessors to the more recent Panera’s soup-and-salad-inspired swimwear, Chick-fil-A’s pickleball paddle, and the pièce de résistance of McDonald’s merch, the Grimace socks.

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Second, the COVID-19 pandemic struck. Countless restaurants took to selling merch to keep the lights on, while people stuck at home turned cooking into a personality trait, with boutique olive oil and tinned fish brands becoming status symbols. The result: an undeniable merchtopia.

In Philly, restaurant merch became “the new band tee” because local diners already viewed their favorite coffee shop, restaurant, or bar as extensions of who they are. The rationale behind Kismet Bagel’s “Bagel Lover” tote is simple: “We made it because we want everyone to know we love bagels,” said co-owner Alexandra Cohen. “Also there’s the rush of being a part of something bigger. You want people to ask you where it’s from so you can tell them about this cool [bagel] place.”

But diners are looking for the items that go beyond “just slapping a logo” on a shirt, says Tabachoy’s Chance Anies. The Filipino restaurant in Bella Vista sells tees and hoodies made by local artists doing their spin on the Tabachoy pig. “People will come to the restaurant, see our little merch station, eat dinner, and immediately [say] ‘I have to have that pig hat,’” Anies said.

Destination dive Tattooed Mom, which opened on South Street in 1997, has sold merch since practically the beginning, says owner Robert Perry. While the original heavy metal T-shirt design — a skull, crossbones, and racing flags — is still among the bar’s best sellers, the limited edition tees made in collaboration with local artists are a standout. “[The shirts] are part of who we are,” Perry said. “Many of these artists are part of the community that showed up from the beginning to support us.”

Over at Herman’s Coffee, owner Matthew Falco doesn’t understand why his customers buy merch, but he likes to have fun with it. Falco’s collection is intentionally random, with dog toys and Christmas ornaments alongside the ashtrays and basketballs. “Why does it have to be just coffee-related things?” asked Falco. Customers tell him that the pieces are “conversation starters.”

Middle Child also likes to get folks talking. The sandwich shop sells rolling papers featuring a stoned Bart Simpson and Garfield, and once offered Monopoly board place mats in collaboration with local artists, such as James Paris and True Hand Design.

Cahn is looking to move away from kitsch, however. The former advertising executive says that he’s focused on building a timeless brand that will endure the ever-changing industry, much like hats he wears from old-school Jewish delis like Katz’s. “We’re going on seven years now — I don’t want to be a flash in the pan,” he said.

Gilda co-owner Brian Mattera “didn’t think anyone was going to want to buy” the T-shirts staff wear at the Portuguese cafe, but customers started asking for them. Now, a corner of the store is dedicated to crewnecks with smiling nata pastries, along with caps and totes printed with “take it easy,” their slogan.

“It is a really great marketing tool and all of that,” he said. But customers, he says, are the motivation for the cafe to offer more merch. “We need some new stuff because people are asking for it.”

Whatever reasons a restaurant has for producing merch, it can represent a revenue stream that helps to offset the industry’s razor-thin margins. “A perfect business is all-consuming, right?” said Alex Tewfik, the former Philly Mag food editor and Mish Mish’s owner. “Putting Mish Mish in your home, in your hands, and on your body — that’s just a good idea from a business sense.”

Mish Mish might seem to simply take this more literally than most: Its signature item is a candle from Particle Goods that evokes the restaurant’s intended vibes with a custom scent profile of Palo Santo, apricot wood, saffron, and sandalwood. But Tewfik began selling it out of necessity: He was burning through three candles a week in the bathroom, so it made sense to cut a deal with the manufacturer to buy in bulk and sell the excess. Still, the brand benefits are tangible: Not just good marketing, but the ability to create a branded world that extends beyond the boundaries of the restaurant itself.

Many of Philly’s restaurant owners are also pleasantly surprised by how far their merch reaches. Jason Kelce once wore a Kismet hat to a celebrity golf tournament, said Cohen. Perry has seen Tattooed Mom tees on strangers at the airport in Seattle. A Tabachoy hat has even appeared on Good Morning America, in addition to farther-flung locales like Greece and the Philippines, where the word translates to “chubby” in Tagalog. “I think people want to take their favorite spots, not just home with them, but also to travel with,” Tabachoy’s Anies said.

That sense of solidarity makes the Philly restaurant merch stand out in the national scene. Anies, whose own collection spans sandwich shops like Middle Child and Cleo Bagels to fine dining establishments like Royal Izakaya, almost strictly wears T-shirts and hats from local restaurants. What ties them together, he said, is that their branding is timeless.

Nearly every restaurant owner interviewed said Philly’s merch is different because it’s driven by collaborations with local artists, but also because it doesn’t take itself too seriously. For Gilda’s Mattera, it’s the cartoonish designs of Kismet and the now-closed Cuzzy’s Ice Cream that bring him the most joy. “Any [merch] with a character on it is sick — I fell in love with that little Kismet bagel man, and I thought it was the cutest thing ever,” said Mattera, who ended up reaching out to Kismet’s designer George Murphy to create Gilda’s own mascot, the happy nata.

“Something a little different, and also a little wild,” kind of like the Philly Phanatic, Mattera said. “But a lot of thought goes into it, and a lot of pride.”