Le Bus restaurant is closing — again
“I want to have more time for myself and for the bakery,” said David Braverman, who said he is healthy at 77 and wants to keep it that way.
David Braverman still loves restaurants after five decades. He’s just tired of running them.
Braverman, 77, said he will close Le Bus East Falls, his restaurant at 4201 Ridge Ave., after service Oct. 25 to focus on his longtime commercial bakery.
The closing will bring Braverman nearly full circle. He left full-service restaurant ownership in 2003 to concentrate on the bakery, though he continued operating a retail bakery-cafe near Rittenhouse Square. He returned to restaurants 15 years later, opening Le Bus East Falls in 2018.
This time, he says, the decision is personal. “I want to declutter,” he said. “I’m 77 years old, and I’m a hands-on operator,” Braverman said. “I don’t sit in an office. I’m involved in the prep, supervising the line cooks, the menus, the production, and general operations.”
He has been working that way for nearly half a century, and the demands have caught up with him. “There are always things to handle: emergencies, upsets, complaints, phone calls, disputes, hiring, firing, sleepless nights,” he said. “I want to have more time for myself and for the bakery.”
Braverman said he remains healthy and wants to keep it that way.
Le Bus’ background
Braverman was among a vanguard of independent food entrepreneurs who helped transform Philadelphia’s dining scene in the late 1970s. Le Bus, launched in 1978 from a converted school bus named Max on the University of Pennsylvania campus, helped introduce a generation of Philadelphians to a different kind of everyday food, with freshly baked breads and sandwiches that stood apart from the city’s conventional lunch fare.
“We were new, and we had vegetarian dishes, lots of greens, and breads that nobody had tasted before — European breads, sourdough breads, all those things,” Braverman recalled.
At a time when food trucks generally meant cheesesteaks and hoagies, Le Bus offered an alternative. Braverman began baking his own bread, ultimately turning what had begun as a sideline into the foundation of his business.
In 1984, he opened a sit-down Le Bus across the street, at 3402 Sansom St. He followed with a restaurant on Main Street in Manayunk in 1991 and established his wholesale bakery in 1993. His breads became fixtures at Philadelphia restaurants, including Le Bec-Fin and the Four Seasons Hotel.
In 1996, he opened a bakery-cafe on 18th Street near Rittenhouse Square. Long run by baker and cook Esther Press McManus, it closed in August 2020 during the pandemic as the lunch trade vanished.
Restaurant retreat, part one
The first retreat from restaurants came after Braverman moved the bakery into a much larger facility in King of Prussia in 2000. The expansion created unexpected expenses and financial difficulties, he said.
In 2003, he sold the Manayunk restaurant to Winnie Clowry, who renamed it Winnie’s, and devoted his attention to the wholesale operation.
In a 2018 interview, Braverman described the decision as necessary but painful. “It was a stressful time. But I never stopped missing the restaurant,” he said.
He particularly missed the immediate satisfaction of feeding people, something that commercial baking, with its wholesale customers and large-scale production, could not provide.
When the former Johnny Mañana’s space off Kelly Drive at Ridge and Midvale Avenues became available, he seized the opportunity to return.
Braverman said his customers have changed over the years, too. Some of the people who embraced Le Bus as younger adults are now approaching retirement themselves.
“When I opened this place, I was in my 60s,” he said. Now, he observed, some of his longtime customers are retiring.
Le Bus East Falls developed its own identity as a neighborhood restaurant catering largely to adults rather than families with young children.
Stepping back
Eight years after returning to restaurants, Braverman says the demands of the business have led him to reassess how he wants to spend his time. He stressed that he is not retiring from work altogether.
The commercial bakery in King of Prussia employs about 150 people, roughly 90% of them immigrants from Mali. Braverman credits its stability to a longtime staff and a workplace culture in which employees take responsibility for the operation.
He singled out Moussa “Omar” Doumbia as an example of the independence of his bakery team. Where the restaurant demands his constant attention, the bakery can function without him managing every detail. “I don’t have stress at the bakery,” Braverman said.
Braverman said he still has about a year remaining on the East Falls restaurant lease. He would welcome someone taking over the space and acknowledged that the liquor license adds value to the business.
Although the restaurant will close, Braverman’s ties to food and baking remain personal as well as professional. His daughter, Jamie, who is attending veterinary school, continues to work at the bakery three mornings a week, baking and decorating cakes.
As for himself, he looks forward to a less demanding schedule without giving up the work that has defined much of his life. “I still have a lot of energy left,” he said.
