5 Stylish Ways to Wear That Restaurant Love on Your Sleeve

When did restaurant merch become the new band tee? Like repping The Runaways or Black Flag, wearing declarations of love for our favorite food icons isn’t exactly new. Foam beer koozies and oversize gray slogan tees have been menu staples at some spots for decades. But over the past few years, food-related merch has veered into streetwear levels of hype. The trend seemed to reach fever pitch in spring 2020, when grassroots initiatives like Merch4 (formerly called Merch4Relief) sprang into action to provide a source of supplementary income for restaurants and bars navigating pandemic shutdowns.

The Boston-based organization was started by friends Aubrie Przybysz, Vince D'Angelo, Sam Parker, and Pete Schaaf (most of whom work at the reservation software company Resy) and operated like a nonprofit before recently transitioning to a for-profit model to ensure its own financial sustainability. Merch4 handpicks artists with hospitality experience to create custom designs for food businesses, which have featured everything from dad hats to sweatshirts to tees and totes bearing playful illustrations of oysters, matzo balls, steak au poivre, and more. They also handle printing at a Boston-based shop, online sales, Instagram promotion, and shipping to customers.

Under the nonprofit classification, 5% of proceeds from each item went to the artist, and the restaurants kept the rest—a model that generated over $510,000 in gross revenue for restaurants in nine states during their first year alone. “[In our initial iteration] we wanted to eliminate the barrier to entry for producing your own merch,” Parker says. “All the little details of managing production—figuring out a design, picking a T-shirt to print it on, even storing the final product—can stop restaurants from even getting started.” Now, in the for-profit phase, Merch4 still uses its existing design networks and manufacturing infrastructure to alleviate the significant planning and up-front costs that often prohibit small restaurants from selling merch, while also receiving a portion of the profits.

Here you’ll find a selection of items featured in Merch4’s fall collection. We’d happily wear the highly colorful, charmingly offbeat lineup of hats and graphic tees for the designs alone. But if you’ve ever fallen in love with the perfectly crispy rice salad at L.A.–based Thai mecca NIGHT + MARKET or indulged in a meaty tasting menu at Friday Saturday Sunday in Philadelphia, this merch doubles as memorabilia for a truly great meal. Add in the benefit of supporting beloved restaurants in a difficult time and you’ve got a great gift for any food lover (or yourself). We’d better start clearing space in our closets now.