It’s been a busy few months for Sarah Coppolo.
Coppolo, the chef-owner behind the wildly successful soup brand Brothmonger, decided to get serious about finding a permanent location for her business in May.
Six months later, the doors to her Bloomfield cafe and soup shop are now open.
Originally intending to just find a commissary kitchen and do wholesale, Coppolo switched gears after seeing the public response to her soups at Little Italy Days.
“I heard again and again that my customers wanted a place where they could come and sit, and enjoy my soups,” she said. “So, the idea evolved, and now it’s a cafe, but we’ll still do wholesaling as well.”
Coppolo first launched Brothmonger via Instagram in 2018. Though she’d worked for years in restaurants, she didn’t have a culinary background herself – but always loved making soups for her friends and family.
“I just would give it to my friends like when they were sick, and I just had this idea that I wanted to start selling it,” she says. “And I was working at Badamo’s and the owner Anthony was just like, ‘You should just do it, like, stop talking about it.” And he told me that I should just sell it on Instagram, and so that’s how it really started.”
Coppolo started making soups in her apartment in the North Side with a small electric stove, she says, and the business took off really quickly, gaining thousands of followers in a few short months (the account now boasts more than 13,000 soup fans and followers).
“I kind of outgrew that space really fast, but I tried to force it in there for as long as I could… but then I was shut down by the health department,” she says.
At that point, Ann Gilligan, the owner of Mayfly Market, reached out to Coppolo and offered her the opportunity to sell her soups at her space, where Coppolo served her soups for about a year.
From there, Coppolo began working at Thyme Machine alongside owner Ryan Chavara, who would later become her partner. Using the Bloomfield space as a commissary kitchen, she focused on selling her soups at select markets around town, including Linea Verde Green Market.
This past May, Chavara sat her down for a heart-to-heart.
“He said, ‘You need to do something. You need to make a move with Brothmonger,'” Coppolo says. “He told me that I had a lot of potential and I was getting complacent, and just really gave me a tough talking-to, and encouraged me to do the crowd funding campaign with Honeycomb.”
After that, things moved quickly.
Coppolo teamed up with Honeycomb Credit to launch an investment campaign, and within a few weeks, the campaign was made public. It closed, fully-funded (to the tune of $100,000) in three days.
“It was very, very overwhelming, and I still can’t believe that it even happened for me,” she says.
Coppolo started looking at buildings for Brothmonger, and very quickly found a spot in Bloomfield at Pad Thai Noodle, at 4770 Liberty Avenue.
“They were still open at the time, but hoping to retire,” she says. “I looked at it at the beginning of July, and closed on August 1. It was that quick. And it was really kind of perfect for me.”
It’s a remarkably fast timeline for a new restaurant top open (especially in Pittsburgh, where health inspections and permit issues can get tricky), but Coppolo says that she was helped by the fact that she was stepping into a restaurant that had already been open.
“It was really just a change of ownership form, which made the process so streamlined for me,” she says. “I submitted my paperwork, and I had an inspection within about two weeks.”
Coppolo also didn’t need to make any major improvements to the space, or take on any construction. Mostly, she says, there was some cosmetic improvements, and a lot of cleaning.
“I rewired some lights, and put up new light fixtures that made it look more like what I wanted,” she says. “It was all well within my ability.”
At Brothmonger, Coppolo will keep three of her most popular soups on the menu regularly: for now, that means wedding soup, roasted red pepper bisque, and pastina. She’ll add another three or four soups to the menu daily depending on the season, and what ingredients are available locally – past favorites include corn chowder, pasta fagioli, and chicken spaetzle.
“I’m also going to have salads, like pasta salad, and potato salad, and some premade mixed green salads available, too,” she says. “And, we’ll have grab-and-go sandwiches.”
For lunch service, Coppolo will offer hot soup, and grilled cheese sandwiches – which will be available in a list of rotating options. Soups will also be available by the quart to go.
The restaurant, which seats about 10, will be open for lunch Mondays through Fridays from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Brothmonger (4770 Liberty Avenue)
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