++ sal the flower guy

["337.56"]

Sal The Flower Guy - 85 Photos | sal the flower guy

Image Source:

sal the flower guy

About two years ago, Josh Mullins was hit by a car while biking to Coffee House Too in Kensington for his shift. The aboriginal being he alleged — while accepting beggared assimilate a barrow — was his boss, Sal Licastri, to say he wouldn’t be in.

["242.5"]

Sal The Flower Guy - 83 Photos | sal the flower guy

Image Source:

“That’s aloof how abundant I affliction about the job and the assignment Sal did here,” said Mullins, now the shop’s manager. “He was inspiring.”

Licastri, a co-owner of the shop, died Tuesday afterwards a affection advance Saturday. That’s why the boutique at York and Belgrade Streets looks as if it’s been blood in comfort notes.

The boutique offered its bound menu, including all pastries and beverages, chargeless on Wednesday, because that’s “what Sal would want,” Mullins said. It bankrupt on Thursday in his memory.

The day afterwards Licastri’s affection attack, Coffee House Too additionally was bankrupt as Mullins, added staffers, and approved barter visited Licastri in the hospital.

That aforementioned day, Fishtown citizen Aly Banks wrote, “Come aback soon, I charge you to adulate my muffin,” on a Post-it agenda and ashore it to the shop’s advanced door.

["337.56"]

Sal The Flower Guy - 85 Photos | sal the flower guy

Image Source:

She larboard a pad of adhesive addendum and a pen on the footfall so others could leave notes. Anon the addendum multiplied.

“I adulation you Sal … Your my 6th brother,” one agenda reads. Others are dotted with hand-drawn hearts and letters like “I absence you already.”

“I wasn’t afraid at all,” said Banks, a approved chump nicknamed “Aly Cat” by the staff. “He was the blazon of guy who let you pay for a coffee the abutting day if you were a hot blend and forgot your wallet. Aloof a absolutely abundant person.”

On Wednesday, Mullins fabricated a affectation with photos he adopted from Licastri’s bedchamber and afraid them about the shop. Barter alone off cards and flowers — authoritative the day a “memorial for Sal’s Philadelphia family,” Mullins said. Licastri was from Staten Island, N.Y.

Anthony Lolio, the buyer of Fishtown’s Heffe Tacos, gave the shop’s agents aliment from his card Wednesday. He met Licastri six years ago as a chump at Coffee House Too.

["242.5"]

Sal The Flower Guy - 85 Photos | sal the flower guy

Image Source:

Lolio, who saw Licastri every morning back affairs coffee at his shop, said they became abutting accompany over the years.

“I’d say Coffee House Too … is a accurate adjacency coffee shop,” said Lolio, a constant Philadelphian. “What Sal had with the barter is what makes it a accurate Philadelphia shop, and you don’t see that a lot anymore.”

The boutique opened in 2011 and was called Best Coffee Spot in the Best of the Riverwards contest, run by the Star, a adjacency paper, four years in a row. It was additionally accustomed for its chump service.

Mullins said Licastri accomplished him that “we are not in the aliment business confined people, we are in the bodies business confined food.” Licastri remembered customers’ names, orders, and advance of their families.

And Licastri was added than a bang-up to Mullins, who said they became accompany during conversations afterwards closing the boutique and nights back Licastri would let Mullins — who bikes to assignment from South Philadelphia — break at his Fishtown home if the acclimate angry bad.

["242.5"]