Why We Opened Loretta’s
The history of Loretta’s is really the history of Bloomsday, and all the lessons we learned on a long road through a first restaurant in Philadelphia and a global pandemic.
When Kelsey and Zach opened Bloomsday in 2019, they had grand plans. The space was big, beautiful and bright, anchored by a large teal Slayer espresso machine at the end of the bar. Marble tables were scattered around the large dining room, accented by cozy nooks with couches and cushy chairs. A wine shop, filled with bottles of esoteric and beautiful natural wine, was tucked in the back of the space. Beyond the wine shop was a gorgeous private dining room with a hand-painted mural. The location? Headhouse Square: a quiet, family-centric neighborhood right around the corner from the busy commercial corridor of South Street. There weren’t any coffee shops open on weekdays in the vicinity, and the nearby restaurants were limited to a bourbon/juke joint, an Argentinian steak house, a pizza place and a dive bar. What better location to nestle an all-day cafe with a stellar coffee and pastry program by day and a sexy wine and small bites menu by night?
For a brief shining moment, it was perfect. Okay, not perfect, but as close to a perfect concept as a new restaurant could get. The cafe filled with folks swilling coffee and pecking away at their laptops during the day, and at night the dining room transformed into a sexy, candlelit space for folks to nibble on patatas bravas and swirl glasses of natty wine. And then… the pandemic hit.
Like every other restaurant, we weathered the storm as best we could, utilizing the Headhouse Square Shambles as an outdoor dining room, installing a takeout window and pivoting our menu approximately 1 million times to stay afloat. It’s a well-worn cliché that the pandemic changed everything about how the restaurant industry operates, and that was certainly true for us. Our labor costs skyrocketed. Our cost of goods also skyrocketed. Suddenly our all-day cafe concept was no longer sustainable.
To operate a space as large as Bloomsday requires a lot of labor, both in front and back of house. As the pandemic dragged on and everyone adapted to a new normal every couple of months or so, we quickly realized that we simply weren’t making enough money during the day to pay for the labor required to keep the cafe open. So we made the hard decision to transition Bloomsday from a 7-day a week all-day cafe to a restaurant open for dinner Wednesday-Saturday and for brunch on Saturdays and Sundays.
During this time the Wawa and the CVS in Headhouse Square closed up shop. You wouldn’t think that the loss of a convenience store and drugstore would make much of a difference to a restaurant, but those closings impacted the foot traffic around Headhouse Square to an astonishing degree. What an unpleasant surprise for Bloomsday!
Facing declining sales and slowing reservations, we knew we had to adapt yet again– and quickly. Two doors down from Bloomsday was a tiny little space that housed Bodhi, a coffee shop run by Bob Logue. Bob was slowly winding down Bodhi and striking out with cool side projects of his own. When we started talking with Bob, he was only opening Bodhi on Sundays to catch the farmer’s market crowd. He was ready to be done, and the space was already set up for a coffee shop, so it felt just right to us. Finally the pieces started to come together.
As residents of the block since 2019, we knew the neighborhood needed a place to grab a coffee, to meet up with friends, to snag a little treat. If the closure of the Wawa and the CVS impacted Bloomsday so much, we knew the folks who actually lived in the neighborhood must be desperate for more community spaces too. In the time between we closed Bloomsday’s daytime and opened Loretta’s, we heard from so many of our neighbors bemoaning the fact that there was nowhere close to grab a coffee.
It worked. As soon as we opened, we were blown away by the immediate, incredibly enthusiastic support for Loretta’s. (THANK YOU!) Soon the crowds bustled into Loretta’s during the day and into Bloomsday at night. Our sister spaces were fully united in their divide-and-conquer strategy.
Fast forward to now: Loretta’s and Bloomsday are fulfilling Kelsey and Zach’s dreams for the block, even if some of our customers don’t realize that the two spots are owned by the same people! But Bloomsday and Loretta’s will always work as a team– they share a commissary kitchen in Bloomsday’s basement, a couple of our staff members split their time between the two businesses, and those of us in upper management work tirelessly to support and integrate Bloomsday and Loretta’s. What began as a way to solve a problem has blossomed into a thriving, supportive community on the square. Looking back, we wouldn’t have it any other way.
