The New York-born all-day café will open in Boston’s Seaport soon, too, with breakfast sandwiches and roast chicken dinners galore.
By Rachel Leah Blumenthal· 7/24/2025, 12:16 p.m.
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Blueberry buttermilk crullers (the special flavor for July 2025) at Daily Provisions. / Photo by Peter Garritano
Cruller fans, rejoice: Daily Provisions is now open in Harvard Square. The casual, all-day chain from New York’s Union Square Hospitality Group aims to be “the extension to your daily routine,” says Daily Provisions president Zach Koff. That might mean kicking off the day with a breakfast sandwich on an everything croissant alongside a cup of orange cinnamon cold brew, or grabbing a dozen light and airy cinnamon crullers to bring to the office. Or perhaps you’re swinging by for a hearty salad for lunch, or snagging a roast chicken dinner to bring home.
It’s the first of (at least) two Greater Boston locations from the restaurant group founded by hospitality guru Danny Meyer (also behind Gramercy Tavern, Union Square Cafe, and more), with a Seaport location slated for 2026. (The group will also open a full-service Italian restaurant, Ci Siamo, alongside the Seaport Daily Provisions.) As Daily Provisions’ first foray beyond New York and New Jersey, to be followed soon by D.C., a Massachusetts expansion felt like a natural fit, says Koff. “We like Boston for the same reasons we love and are successful in New York City: It’s a ‘walk-work-live’ town. Everyone’s got a routine, and you’re constantly in your triangle.”
Breakfast sandwiches at Daily Provisions. / Photo by Peter Garritano
While the menu is mostly consistent from location to location, the Daily Provisions team does like to come up with some location-specific offerings meaningful to their neighborhoods, so don’t be surprised eventually to find some Boston-y things on this menu. (We’re angling for a steak tip cruller.) For now, the menu centers around breakfast sandwiches, crullers, breakfast sandwiches on crullers, lunch sandwiches and salads, and roast chicken dinners, plus various café beverages and a concise selection of beer, wine, and brunchy cocktails (espresso martinis, mimosas, bloody marys).
Boston’s already pretty enthusiastic about roast chicken dinners—who among us hasn’t grabbed a Market Basket rotisserie chicken for $5 for an easy weeknight meal? “More for Your Dollar,” indeed. Or, for something a little fancier, local restaurants like Amba (this year’s Best of Boston winner for “Best Reason to Stay in and Eat”) and Shy Bird highlight takeout-friendly whole birds with tasty sides. So, it’s easy to imagine that Daily Provisions will fit right into our prime poultry landscape with its half and whole chickens, flanked by such sides as crispy potatoes or snap peas with quinoa.
The BLT at Daily Provisions. / Photo by Peter Garritano
The Daily Provisions team isn’t dismissing the possibility of more Boston-area locations beyond Harvard and Seaport, although they’re approaching it strategically, says Koff, carefully putting down roots. “We definitely want to be the neighborhood place before we are everywhere,” he says of the eight-year-old chain, which now has 10 locations. “But Boston is fortunate to have a number of really great neighborhoods that I think could benefit from a little addition to their routine, so we’ve got our sights on a lot.”
Major growth doesn’t feel out of the realm of possibility; founder Danny Meyer is also behind the international burger mega-chain Shake Shack, after all. He’s respected in the industry for his philosophy of “enlightened hospitality,” which is built on teamwork, generosity, and passion. Translating that ethos from Union Square Hospitality’s fine-dining restaurants to the decidedly more casual Daily Provisions is what differentiates it from other places where you could grab a cup of coffee or sandwich, says Koff. “We take the care, passion, and sensibility that fine-dining applies to their people, guests, and food, but for a different kind of experience—very easy, very fun, very non-fussy. Our company tries to teach the team [how to make customers] feel like someone special, someone rock star-y.”
Roast chicken and sides at Daily Provisions. / Photo by Peter Garritano
The sentiment is the same from the back of the house. Daily Provisions’ executive culinary director Claudia Fleming, a James Beard Award winner who also comes from a fine-dining background, tries to impart that high-level hospitality to her kitchen team. “I tell [the staff] all the time that the way people who work in the kitchen show hospitality is by serving delicious, beautiful food,” she says. “We don’t get to make regulars the same way the front of house does, but people know that you care by the way that you prepare the food.”
Her day-to-day routine is quite different now compared to her fine-dining days, when she could stop by the farmers market in the morning and have a new dish on the menu that same evening, she says. Now, it’s a months-long process to develop dishes and train the increasingly far-flung teams on them. But it’s a change she’s relishing. “I had my day [in fine-dining],” she says. Casual food feels “more democratic, like good food is for everybody, and that really appeals to me.”
Maple crullers at Daily Provisions. / Photo by Peter Garritano
Open daily from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. and currently selling limited-edition t-shirts and hats, a collaboration with Boston’s Project Paulie, with 20% of proceeds benefiting Community Servings, a local nonprofit that provides medically tailored meals to those in need. 1 Brattle Sq. Suite A1, Harvard Square, Cambridge, dailyprovisions.co.
