News Summary

• The cafe, which added a quotidian use to the Kimmel lobby at Broad and Spruce Streets, had become "a financial burden," an executive for the restaurant said.Garces Trading Co., the cafe and mini-market in the lobby of the Kimmel Center, has closed after only a year in operation..
• Further, the long-term future of Volvér, the posh Jose Garces restaurant on the Kimmel’s Spruce Street side, seems murky.In a joint statement to The Inquirer, the Philadelphia Orchestra and Kimmel Center Inc. (POKC) and restaurant operator Ideation Hospitality described Garces Trading’s closing as a mutual decision, effective Monday..
• Ideation revived it, first as a pandemic-era ghost kitchen.The other Garces Trading location, in the lobby of the Cira Centre across from 30th Street Station, is unaffected by the closing at the Kimmel.Garces Trading’s opening added a quotidian use to the Kimmel lobby at Broad and Spruce Streets..
• It combined Garces-branded groceries, a restaurant, and, for a time, a small Fine Wines and Good Spirits shop that enabled the restaurant to operate as a BYOB..
• Cafe crowds, though modest so far, are bringing a level of steady activity not seen at the Kimmel in many years.”.
• It has made the institution less opaque — metaphorically and physically.”Dobrin observed that “when you pass by on Spruce, you look through glass to see a warm social tableau inside — people eating, drinking, and talking..