A
self-described “jack of all trades,” Jack Treatman,
owner of Old City Coff ee, starts his day early.

Always with a cup of top-notch coff ee, but we’ll get
to that later.

Born in 1957 as the oldest of fi ve children, Treatman
gravitated toward the kitchen early: “My mother was not
a good cook and we all liked to eat, so I emerged as the
family cook.”
His mother came from a family of academics, and his
father’s family was in the hosiery business, located in what
was then called the “Wholesale District” — now Old City.

The hosiery business was diffi cult: The Treatmans started
off providing repairs and selling seconds and, eventually,
his father designed a line of hosiery sold in area retail
stores. Treatman attended what was then called the
Philadelphia College of Textiles and Science with a plan to
join the family business.

Jack of
All Trades
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Jack Treatman at Old City Coff ee
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And, for a time, he did. He graduated from Textile
and worked in the hosiery business. But his timing
was unfortunate; by the mid-1980s, that type of
manufacturing in the city was dying, and small retail
was following suit. But he does not look back on the
time with regret — quite the opposite.

In addition to the experience he gleaned from
working in the family business, Treatman met his
future wife.

Ruth Isaac had opened Old City Coff ee on Church
Street, and Treatman loved coff ee. He soon discov-
ered that he loved her, too.

Treatman kvells about Isaac’s courage and spirit in
launching the business.

“She was truly a pioneer,” he said. “In those days,
there was no infrastructure to source coff ee beans.

No specialty coff ee customer base. People didn’t
even know what a cappuccino was. She roasted the
beans in the back of her shop.”
While Treatman became a loyal customer, he
also realized that his future didn’t lie in the hosiery
business. He was a self-taught cook who had garnered
coff ee knowledge through a management internship
at Linton’s restaurant, an old Philadelphia institution
known for a great cup of coff ee. While there, he
learned from a waitress that the “secret” to a great
cup of coff ee was the proportion; the accepted
convention was to use a full basket of grounds with
four pitchers of water.

The savvy waitress revealed to Treatman that the
key was to reduce the water to three pitchers, result-
ing in a much stronger, more fl avorful cup. Treatman
soon took his passion for food — “coff ee was along
for the ride” — and entered the Culinary Institute of
America’s accelerated program.

There, he learned garde manger, a lot of culinary
skills and baking techniques and, coming out, he
landed a job at the American Diner in Princeton, New
Jersey. When the commute became unmanageable,
he joined the staff of the White Dog Café.

Around that time, Isaac decided to expand Old City
Coff ee, adding a location at Reading Terminal Market
and needing more hands on deck.

The couple married in 1988 and, a year later,
Treatman left White Dog and joined Old City Coff ee.

They bought a vintage Probat coff ee roaster to
roast beans on-site, and the machine still operates
today. In 1990, Treatman and Isaac acquired the
space adjacent to the original Old City Coff ee
location on Church Street and expanded into a
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