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Fourteen years ago Marti Lieberman launched Mac Mart, a fast-casual mac and cheese food bowl restaurant based on a few family recipes. And for a while Lieberman did great. She moved from a food truck, to a brick and mortar and even franchised. At one point she had a staff of over 30 people.
“We were flying high,” said Lieberman.
But last January, Lieberman shrunk Mac Mart, closing her franchises, letting go of her employees and moving into a small kiosk in Center City. Looking back, she sometimes wishes she never started.
“If I had to go back, I’d choose a 9 to 5 where someone cuts my check for me, my weekends are spent with my family and my friends, I’m not missing birthday parties or weddings or funerals or big life events,” said Lieberman. “I would choose more of me.”
Lieberman later added that she enjoys what she does at Mac Mart, which she now runs with just her husband, but the last few years have been hard. COVID sent Lieberman’s customers home and fewer returned when online work became the norm. Lieberman said her spot by Rittenhouse was robbed nine times within the last six years and said she’s now seen her customers more hesitant to spend money in an economy in which prices have spiked — including those for her own supplies. While food delivery apps have expanded Mac Mart’s reach, Lieberman said that high platform fees and customer promo codes mean these deliveries are rarely profitable.
Since moving to their kiosk on 18th and Arch streets, Lieberman said they’re in the green. Her social media page for Mac Mart, where she posts candid videos of her showing off new dishes and occasionally handling a hater, has amassed over 53,000 followers and drives most of her business. Using her social media skills she works another job, running the social media of other businesses in her down hours and from home.
“You either have to humble yourself and start over or call it quits and just move on.
And we were too egotistical to call it quits,” said Lieberman. “We love Mac Mart too much.”
Mac Mart isn’t alone in struggling as a restaurant in Philadelphia. In 2025, 86 Philadelphia-area restaurants and bars closed. This year, from January to June 39 restaurants closed within Philadelphia. Disruptions to global energy and fertilizer supply caused by the war in Iran has only restaurant operating expenses that had already jumped 36% since 2019.
“Meat is 30% more expensive than it has been, vegetables are up by like 10 to 15%,” said Omar Tate, co-founder of West Philly’s Afrocentric restaurant Honeysuckle.
“Sometimes it feels very apocalyptic,” said Cybille St. Aude-Tate, Tate’s wife and co-founder. “We wake up some days and we’re just like, ‘Man, are we really doing this?’”
Since opening in April 2025 on Broad Street, Honeysuckle has accumulated some of Philadelphia’s biggest restaurant accolades. It was named one of Bon Appétit’s 19 best new restaurants in the country this year, while founders Omar Tate and Cybille St. Aude-Tate earned spots on Food & Wine’s Best New Chefs list and were finalists for a James Beard Award. Philadelphia Magazine also ranked Honeysuckle the city’s second-best restaurant in 2026. That hasn’t meant it’s founders are in the green just yet.
“It’s not all roses,” said Tate. “We’re a popular restaurant, but not a financially stable restaurant.”
To help close that financial gap, the Tates launched Honeysuckle Midday, a pay-what-you-can, three-course lunch program that lets customers choose between paying $20, $35 or $55 for their meal. The restaurant offers a selection of dishes from its dinner menu, maintaining the same level of service while bringing in revenue during hours when employees are already working. Tate said the $20 option can sometimes mean taking a loss, while customers paying $55 help offset those costs. The program also gives customers who can’t afford Honeysuckle’s $135 dinner tasting menu a more accessible way to experience the restaurant.
After about a month, the program is averaging 25 customers per lunch service, with some returning multiple times a week. The Tates said they hope to eventually double that number. They’ve also expanded catering and private events, finding ways to generate revenue outside their usual dinner service. The new service has helped with a 70% year-over-year increase in revenue in October.
Citywide, restaurants are finding new ways to innovate and scrape by. In East Kensington, Post Haste introduced pay-what-you-can Sundays after struggling to attract customers on what executive chef Ari Miller described as an “abysmal” night for business.
On Sundays, customers can order from the restaurant’s regular food menu and decide how much they can afford to pay. Drinks remain full price, and an automatic gratuity is added to ensure staff are compensated. Miller said most diners pay around the suggested prices, while some pay less and others more. He’s even seen customers leave $50 for a $10 dish.
“Some people leave less, and some people leave more, and it averages out,” said Miller.
The program has helped increase Sunday sales and attracted regular customers, some of whom return on other nights. Miller also sees it as a way to make the restaurant’s carefully crafted dishes accessible to people who might not otherwise be able to afford them.
“We’re not doing this as charity,” said Miller. Instead, he described the program as an effort to “democratize that access to the luxury a little bit more.”
Post Haste has also experimented with other ways to bring people through its doors, including a new $35 children’s tasting menu featuring grilled cheese, buttered noodles with hot dogs and chocolate pudding. Miller said the idea is to give parents an affordable alternative to hiring a babysitter while allowing them to enjoy a night out.
Other restaurants have made even more dramatic changes. In November 2025, Fishtown’s Percy abandoned its upscale hybrid restaurant concept just six months after opening and reinvented itself as an all-day diner. The restaurant cut prices on most dishes by $4 to $6, hoping to become somewhere customers would visit multiple times a week rather than just for special occasions.
At Mission Taqueria near Rittenhouse Square, chefs have adjusted ingredients to reduce costs without substantially increasing menu prices. The restaurant switched from sirloin to chuck roll for its popular carne asada tacos. Regional chain Harvest Seasonal Grill went further, lowering menu prices and adjusting dishes to reduce costs. Its owners reported that customer traffic subsequently increased by 10% to 14% year over year.
For some established Philadelphia brands, adaptation has meant shrinking. In July, restaurant group CookNSolo announced the closure of six Federal Donuts & Chicken and Goldie locations, citing weakening demand for fast-casual meals and slow weekday lunch business since the pandemic. The group said consolidating operations would help preserve the two brands.
The financial pressures extend beyond Philadelphia. According to the National Restaurant Association, 33% of surveyed restaurant operators reported that their businesses were not profitable during the first half of 2026. The organization estimates that a typical independent restaurant operated on a pretax profit margin of roughly 5% before the pandemic, leaving little room to absorb higher food, labor and other expenses.
Post Haste’s experiment hasn’t eliminated its financial challenges. Miller said the restaurant is coming off a slow summer, with inconsistent customer traffic making it difficult to predict which nights will be busy. Despite the increase in Sunday sales, he said the business continues to face difficult questions about its financial future.
“We’re currently having hard conversations,” Miller said, including about how much money the owner can afford to lose each month. “At some point funds run out, and decisions have to be made.”
