{"id":438506,"date":"2026-08-20T17:02:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T17:02:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/438506\/"},"modified":"2026-08-20T17:02:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-20T17:02:11","slug":"welcome-to-san-franciscos-restaurant-merch-renaissance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/438506\/","title":{"rendered":"Welcome to San Francisco\u2019s restaurant merch renaissance"},"content":{"rendered":"

Published Aug. 20, 2026at6:00am<\/p>\n

Inspiration for great merch can happen anywhere.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Anthony Strong, chef-owner of Pasta Supply Co (opens in new tab)<\/a>, found it during a research trip to Italy. He and his wife were in Emilia-Romagna. She was wearing a shirt with the album cover for Joy Division\u2019s \u201cUnknown Pleasures.\u201d \u201cI had pasta on the brain,\u201d Strong says. \u201cI realized, \u2018Oh, you know what would make cool merch? The Joy Division album cover \u2014 but pasta.\u201d Back home, they reimagined the design, transforming its spiky radio waves into strands of spaghetti. They printed it on black shirts and canvas totes, which have been such a hit that they\u2019re now in their ninth printing run.<\/p>\n

\"APasta Supply Co\u2019s lineup of branded shirts. | Source: Courtesy of Pasta Supply Co.<\/p>\n

Strong, who was most recently struck with new design inspiration during a four-hour wait at the San Francisco Permit Center, isn\u2019t just a producer of top-tier merch. He\u2019s also a consumer and has picked up \u201cirreverent\u201d branded swag from the Richmond restaurant The Laundromat, which sells shirts, hats, and onesies emblazoned with a waving bagel (opens in new tab)<\/a> and $15 ice bags (opens in new tab)<\/a> for chilling bottles of wine on the go. \u201cIrony and nostalgia seem to be on trend these days,\u201d Strong says.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published Aug. 20, 2026at6:00am Inspiration for great merch can happen anywhere.\u00a0 Anthony Strong, chef-owner of Pasta Supply Co…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":438507,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[3399,36210,6927,412,101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-438506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-clothing","tag-cool-factory","tag-pizza","tag-restaurants","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=438506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438506\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/438507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=438506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=438506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=438506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}