Day Trip

DayTrip opened on Amboy Road on August 22, 2024. The connected coffee shop was five days from opening when the French Broad came up on September 27 and took both. Brandon Davis and his husband Davie Roberts were one month into business and $190,000 into loans. Strangers covered it. A GoFundMe drew a large share of its money from LGBTQ+ donors, and the detail Davis keeps returning to is who they were: “so many teenagers donated to our GoFundMe.”

They did not wait for a building. That December they bought into The Malvern on Patton Avenue and spent three months running DayTrip out of someone else’s bar. The permanent room came in May 2025, at 174 Broadway, in the space Archetype Brewing left behind. It is twice the size of Amboy Road.

A ribbed wood-beam ceiling strings warm bulbs over an orange-lacquered counter; behind it, a diamond mirror rimmed in marquee lights sits over a strip of red neon. The back room is papered floor to ceiling in a 1970s floral mural, an owl painting above gold velvet armchairs. The drinks stay in the decade and do not apologize for it. Pink Squirrel is creme de noyaux, creme de cacao and heavy cream, a dessert that has stopped pretending otherwise. A shirt on the merch rail reads I Went To Daytrip And All I Did Was Sin.

The cafe is in the front now. It took the longest.