After several pop-up locations around the country, New York-born footwear and lifestyle brand Brunch is putting down permanent roots for the first time.
Late last week, Brunch opened the doors to its first official flagship store at 251 Elizabeth Street in the Nolita neighborhood of New York City. The store now carries the brand’s full range of footwear including its original slipper, loafers, mules, suede and shearling footwear, pajamas, robes, apparel and kids.
Designed by Studio Jume around the feeling of “the first morning of vacation,” the space brings Brunch’s hospitality roots full circle, transforming the store into a playful hotel lobby. Details include a butter-yellow plaster facade, navy scalloped awning, sidewalk cafe setup, cherry wood millwork, powder-blue tile, numbered hotel-inspired pickup cubbies, a curved check-in counter and a visible embroidery station where customers can personalize their pair of shoes.
What’s more, a terry-cloth wall displays the embroidery menu, while amber stained glass, custom powder-blue mirrors and warm lighting add to the hotel-inspired atmosphere. Playful touches like a front-desk bell, “enjoy your stay” brass floor inlay, cappuccino cups and a croissant-shaped door handle bring the Brunch story to life.
Personalization also has a permanent home inside the flagship. Customers will be able to embroider Brunch’s terry styles with different icons and thread colors, while a separate customization bar will offer laces, hardware, beads and charms for select footwear.
For founders and brothers Daniel and Joshua Sitt, the opening brings Brunch back to where its story began.
“Nolita felt like a natural fit for who our customer is,” the founders said in a joint statement. “Elizabeth Street specifically is one of those blocks where everything just clicks — the coffee shops, the boutiques, the energy. It’s all curated in a way that mirrors how our customer actually lives.”
Brunch started in 2020 with a feeling: checking into a hotel, putting on the slippers and immediately settling into vacation mode. Daniel, inspired by his own obsession with footwear, travel and slow living, saw an opportunity to take something typically confined to the hotel room and build an entire brand around what it represented: comfort, leisure and the permission to slow down.
At the time, Joshua was on a separate entrepreneurial path, having co-founded Madhappy while at Georgetown. Brunch began as Daniel’s vision independently, but as the young brand started finding its audience organically, Joshua began working alongside his brother to help build it. Two separate entrepreneurial paths ultimately converged around a larger opportunity.
Brunch opened its first New York pop-up in 2021 and has since established temporary and seasonal spaces across New York, Amagansett and Aspen. Those experiences became less about simply selling product and more about testing how customers wanted to interact with the brand.
In Amagansett, Brunch introduced its Boat Mule alongside a charm bar that allowed customers to customize their pairs. Embroidery evolved from a smaller experiment into an offering used for weddings, special occasions and gifting. Its Prince Street pop-up became another important testing ground for community events, collaborations and in-person experiences.
Rather than viewing the flagship simply as another point of sale, the brothers describe it as a “third space” for the Brunch community. Events, activations, creator programming and brand partnerships will rotate through the location, giving Brunch a permanent backdrop for the type of experiences it previously had to build temporarily.
“There’s something about having a flagship in NYC that creates a sense of permanence in the company,” Joshua and Daniel added. “It also means we have a space that is the most important and reflective physical representation of who we are as a brand. Each detail was extremely thought out to be uniquely Brunch.”