Almost Home General’s Old City coffeehouse closed this week, capping a complicated two-year joint venture between the Jersey Shore-based chain and Glu Hospitality, the now-disbanded restaurant group that operated the location.
Robbie Doran, who founded Almost Home in 2000 in Monmouth County, said his company was moving on and plans to open a coffee shop and grocery store of its own at Beach Street Landing in Northern Liberties. They will join Almost Home’s other Philadelphia location, on the ground floor of the Hagert & York development in East Kensington.
Almost Home’s relationship with Glu began around 2023, when Glu founders Tim Lu and Derek Gibbons approached Doran, whom they knew from working in the New York City nightlife scene.
“They wanted my brand,” Doran said. “I saw the growth with Glu and assumed they knew what they were doing.”
At the time, Glu was on a tear of openings since its founding in 2019, at one point operating the chain Bagels & Co. alongside seven other vibey restaurants, including Northern Liberties’ Figo and the subterranean Center City ramen bar Chika, both now shuttered.
In April 2024, Glu and Doran opened the Almost Home location at the corner of Second and Race Streets, on the ground floor of the Bridge on Race building beside the Ben Franklin Bridge. The coffee shop offered cocktails alongside full brunch and dinner menus, and was an immediate hit on social media thanks to its over-the-top lattes and photogenic color-coded bookshelves.
Doran said the arrangement began to break down early last year after broader issues surfaced at other Glu-owned restaurants. In addition to allegations of wage theft, Glu was running afoul of state liquor laws by using off-premises catering permits, rather than full liquor licenses, to sell alcohol at both Almost Home and Figo. Two other former Glu restaurants — Chika and Izakaya Fishtown — were operating under expired liquor licenses.
“When things started falling apart, it happened fast — within about two weeks, everything came crashing down,” Doran said. “We were finding things out from the news before hearing about them internally, which isn’t how a partnership should work.”
In March 2025, Lu and Gibbons announced that the entire company was defunct. Later that month, Glu investor Carlton Smith filed a civil suit in Common Pleas Court, alleging that Lu, Lu’s brother, and three men Smith believed to be Almost Home General employees had assaulted him inside the cafe in spring 2024 after Smith asked Lu to return his $100,000 investment; that lawsuit is listed as pending.
After Glu shut down, Doran said he dissolved Almost Home’s partnership. From then on, Doran said, Lu ran the Old City cafe.
The shop faced operational challenges. In September 2025, the cafe was shut down by the Philadelphia Department of Health after a failed health inspection found evidence of mouse droppings and uncontained rat poison throughout the kitchen. The report’s findings drew attention on social media that Lu said the business could not bounce back from.
“The report itself wasn’t unusual from an operational standpoint,” Lu said. “But someone on social media amplified it and added commentary that made it seem worse than it was.”
Other factors contributed to the decline, Lu said, including a harsh winter that caused foot traffic to slow further. “At the end of the day, the business just wasn’t sustainable,” Lu said.
Doran, who operates eight Almost Home General locations in New Jersey in addition to the East Kensington shop, said the experience affected his business beyond Philadelphia.
“A lot of the blame fell on him,” Doran said of Lu. “But ultimately, the decisions that were made had ripple effects. Some of that fallout affected me as well, even though I wasn’t involved in those decisions.”
Doran emphasized that he doesn’t view Lu as solely responsible for the outcome and said he has focused on supporting staff affected by the closure. “I’ve been reaching out to employees to make sure they’re taken care of,” Doran said. “I’m not going to let staff get hurt in the process.”
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