The storefront at 392 Harvard Street has two ordering screens, a pickup counter and a few tables. A screen on the wall shows delivery orders as they're being made. When Brookline.News visited Wonder after its late-September opening, most of the customers were delivery drivers picking up bags and heading out on scooters.
A few doors down, the newer arrivals work very differently. In Coolidge Corner this fall, the new food mostly comes from counters built for speed, self-service or the drive back to someone's kitchen. The new shops and the theater are filling up with classes, workshops and reasons to stay an extra hour.
The Counters Built for Quick Pickup
Wonder is the clearest example. Brookline.News describes it as a hybrid of a ghost kitchen, a restaurant and a food hall. One order can draw on more than 20 in-house "restaurants," so pizza, poke and barbecue can land in the same bag. All of that food comes from Wonder's own kitchen, even though each cuisine carries its own brand name. Mo Morrill, Wonder's regional vice president, told Brookline.News that "meals are cooked and finished to order on site" and that each location gets fresh ingredients seven days a week.
The same app reaches beyond the Harvard Street kitchen. Wonder bought Grubhub in 2025, and its platform also lists local restaurants such as Lee's Burgers and Genki Ya Sushi. Those come as separate deliveries. The one-bag order only works with Wonder's own brands.
Two more food concepts announced for the Beacon Street side follow the same idea.
- The Ramyun Zip, 1310 Beacon Street. Brookline.News reported in October that it's a self-service Korean ramyun shop with more than 120 food items. Toppings include dumplings, scallions, fish cakes and bean sprouts.
- O'Poké, 1376A Beacon Street. O'Poké is the announced replacement for the former OneZo Bubble Tea space. What Now Boston reported a planned menu of build-your-own and signature poke bowls, hot rice bowls, poke toasts, sushi push pops and Taiwanese-inspired snacks. Boba stays on the menu, a nod to the shop it replaces.
All three are built around a wide menu of options the customer assembles, at a screen, a self-serve station or a build-your-own counter.
Why Local Owners Have Been Watching Delivery
In August, Brookline.News looked at a run of closures: Golden Temple, Party Favors, Kaojiu and Sanela Salon. The owners and advocates it interviewed mostly saw each closure as having its own cause. They also pointed to the same pressures, including rising operating costs and rents, changing consumer habits and owners nearing retirement.
Chris Mutty, former executive director of the Brookline Chamber of Commerce, told the outlet that ordering meals through apps like Uber Eats has made traditional storefronts harder to sustain. He added that a commercial lease now means betting you'll be profitable for the next ten years. Steven Peljovich of Michael's Deli on Harvard Street described the pressure from the counter. His raw ingredients cost three or four times what they used to, he said, and "at some point, you can only charge so much for a sandwich."
David Leschinsky, who owns Eureka! Puzzles & Games in Coolidge Corner, focused on the district as a whole. He said businesses like his do best when surrounded by other places people want to visit. He also described how the corner has cycled through waves of the same kind of shop: frozen yogurt, then ice cream, then nail salons, now barber shops.
"The mix is critical, and the mix that I have seen that has been coming here into Coolidge Corner is a real concern."
He said that to Brookline.News in August. The retail arrivals below fit his idea of a destination business: places that give people a reason to come to the corner and stay.
The Shops Adding Reasons to Stay
Boston General Store, 313A Harvard Street. The shop moved down the block from 305 Harvard Street into a larger space. According to its location page, the new space includes a stationery store, and it's open Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Stationery is something people pick out in person, by testing the pen and feeling the paper.
Glass Ripples, 305 Harvard Street. The space Boston General Store left is the planned second location of Glass Ripples, the Cambridge artisan-glassware shop owned by Sifan Wu. Brookline Record reported that the Brookline location would carry goods from independent artists and expand the shop's glass-fusing workshops. Glass-jewelry classes, ceramics and pop-up events were also in the plan. A workshop means booking a seat for an afternoon, so people plan their visit around it.
Newbery Street Coffee Roasters, 14 and 240 Harvard Street. Founder Pack Katisomsakul's Thai-coffee project has a permanent café planned at 240 Harvard Street, per Brookline.News. Newbery's website lists a weekend café in residence at Merai Bar, 14 Harvard Street, usually open 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. It serves pour-over coffee, Asian-inspired drinks and salt bread. Pour-over takes a few minutes to make, so customers end up waiting at the counter.
Marky's Caviar, 420 Harvard Street. It isn't new, having opened in April 2025. Brookline.News profiled it in late October as a combined shop and café, so it belongs in the same group of places built around a sit-down tasting.
A Harvard Street Walk, in Address Order
Here are both groups in the order you'd pass them walking north from Brookline Village toward Beacon Street, then along Beacon:
- 14 Harvard Street. Newbery Street's weekend café in residence at Merai Bar.
- 240 Harvard Street. The planned permanent home of Newbery Street Coffee Roasters.
- 290 Harvard Street. Coolidge Corner Theatre.
- 305 Harvard Street. Glass Ripples' planned shop, in the former Boston General Store space.
- 313A Harvard Street. Boston General Store's larger shop, now with stationery.
- 392 Harvard Street. Wonder.
- 406 Harvard Street. The former Kaojiu, one of the summer closures.
- 420 Harvard Street. Marky's Caviar.
- 1310 Beacon Street. The Ramyun Zip.
- 1376A Beacon Street. O'Poké's planned shop, in the former OneZo Bubble Tea space.
In the corner's center, the classes and workshops sit between 240 and 313A. Wonder and the two Beacon Street food concepts sit north of them, on the stretches closer to Beacon Street and along it.
The Coolidge Has Classes on the Calendar Too
The theater at 290 Harvard Street has the corner's busiest calendar this season, and much of it runs on the same idea of spending time in the room. Coolidge Corner Theatre's November and December 2026 film guide includes a Coen Brothers film class on Tuesdays from 10 a.m. to 1:15 p.m., running November 10 through December 8. The guide also lists a Boston Open Screen on Tuesday, December 8 at 7 p.m.
The rest of the season's dated screenings:
- Monday, November 23, 7 p.m. Daughters of the Dust
- Thursday, December 3, 7 p.m. The Lion in Winter
- Saturday, December 5 and Sunday, December 6, 10:30 a.m. The Polar Express
- Saturday, December 19 and Sunday, December 20, 10:30 a.m. The Muppet Christmas Carol
The two December weekend mornings fit neatly with the 10 a.m. openings at Boston General Store, and on weekends, with Newbery's café hours at Merai Bar.
What Holds a Block Together
Leschinsky's point in August was that a destination business depends on its neighbors. On Harvard Street, that means 305 and 313A are next to each other, with a coffee bar three doors south of the theater and a 10:30 a.m. family screening on a Saturday. Tom Coppi of The Picture Place, a Coolidge Corner frame shop, told Brookline.News his business has stayed "just about the same" since he took it over in 2015. He said the harder part now is that high commercial rents keep newcomers out. The businesses adding classes, stationery and pour-over to Harvard Street are the ones that committed to a lease anyway.
If you own a building on Harvard or Beacon Street with a ground-floor storefront, the tenant downstairs shapes the block as much as the building itself. Colin Bayley and the Bayley & Natoli team advise owners and investors on how storefront tenants affect a property's long-term value. Colin Bayley can walk you through what this fall's changes mean for your building. Request a Home Valuation & Market Plan.
