As Ted Munice entered Koch's Deli in 1991, the last thing he expected was a personalized welcome. Twenty years had passed since his last visit as a Wharton undergraduate student.
Yet as soon as he opened the shop's white door, the familiar, gruff voice of Bob Koch greeted him.
"Hey Ted," the deli owner said. "How are you doing? Haven't seen you in a while."
At first, Munice was shocked the smiling burly man behind the counter remembered him after so many years. But he realized it was exactly this unexpected friendliness that made Koch's unique.
"He always remembered me, and there was nothing special about me," said Munice, who works as a consultant in New York. "That was always amazing."
Like his parents and brother who ran the deli before him, Bob Koch continued to make it famous -- not only for its sandwiches, but also for its hospitality. But with Koch's unexpected death in August, the shop's future is now uncertain.
At its most basic level, Koch's is a tiny, mom-and-pop Jewish deli located at 4309 Locust St. For unknowing passers-by, the shop's green canopy and plain sign can easily blend into the background. But behind its humble storefront, the deli is known to make gargantuan sandwiches that appeal to a wide clientele.
The menu boasts more than a dozen kinds of double-deckers, all bursting at the seams with meats like pastrami, roast beef and chopped liver. "The Penn Special" consists of corned beef, pastrami, tongue, sweet muenster cheese and cole slaw with Russian dressing on rye.
A faded poster on the wall proclaims the deli's motto: "More meat for less bread at Koch's." With roughly half a pound of meat in every sandwich, it's no lie.
But beyond the layers of freshly cut meat and cheese is the spirit of the family that founded the establishment and has operated it since 1966.
Sid and Frances Koch opened the shop hoping to serve students near the college campuses in West Philadelphia. Even with their three sons as the only employees, the deli quickly gained popularity in the neighborhood.
"It didn't grow in size -- it just grew in reputation," said Barry Koch, Bob's youngest and only surviving brother.
The friendliness of the Koch family was well-known in those days, said Justin Lavin, who lived off the deli's roast-beef hoagies and cheesesteaks for 14 years while completing his undergraduate studies, medical school and residency at Penn starting in 1979.
"They knew everyone in the neighborhood, knew everybody by their first name and knew what they did," said Lavin, who is now a fetal-medicine specialist in Akron, Ohio. "I just don't know how they did it. [There are] hundreds, thousands of people who come in there, and they always remembered everyone by name."
For a few years, Lavin lived in a sublet above the deli. Once, he remembers, Mrs. Koch, worrying that he wasn't eating enough, sent up a sandwich for him while he was studying for exams.
"My mother treated the college kids like they were her college kids away from school," Barry Koch said. "She was a Jewish mother to all the kids."
Sometimes, Frances Koch gave free sandwiches to students when they had no money and invited students over when they couldn't go home for Jewish holidays.
"I think they looked at their customers as friends and not just people who they did business with," Lavin said. "They liked their customers and were very nice to their customers. ... Their customers had a great deal of affection for them."
Back then, Lavin said, there were not as many places to eat on campus, so a lot of students would make the trip to the deli because "it was some of the best food around."
Today, even with a plethora of on- and off-campus dining options to choose from, many Penn students still make the westward trek to Koch's.
John Skinner is one of them. As a newly arrived doctoral student last year, Skinner first heard about the deli through other Penn students.
"Everybody told me this was the place to go, it was the best sandwiches around," he said. "And I have to admit, [they were] the best hoagies I've ever had. I've grown up in Pennsylvania my whole life, and I've never had hoagies as good as they made theirs."
Soon, Skinner was eating Koch's sandwiches at least once a week. But like most of Koch's loyal customers, he agreed that it was the owner's friendliness that made the deli experience exceptional.
All the people who walked through the door, even deli newcomers, were greeted with the same warmth, Skinner said.
"It was nice to have the honor of a deli owner treat you like you're his friend even before you get to know him," Skinner said. "And it just becomes like family as you get to know him better."
Bob Koch ran the restaurant with his brother Lou after their father suffered a stroke in 1984. When Lou died of heart failure in 1995, Bob took the reins and continued the family tradition of filling hungry stomachs and connecting with the customers. With his corny jokes and superhuman knack for names, Bob made friends easily.
A Wharton freshman once came into the shop, Bob said in an interview with The Daily Pennsylvanian in 2000. "He came in last year and told me that my place was too small, that I should redesign my price structure and open another branch. And he said, 'You have a Penn special and a Drexel special, so where's the Wharton special?' I said, 'Right here. It's the tongue and bologna sandwich.'"
According to Barry Koch, Lou was the original corny joke guy.
"My father was a storyteller, Louis was a jokester and Bobby eventually fit into both roles," Barry said. "And my mother was just nice to people."
Bob "saw the best in everybody, and he saw the good in everybody," said his wife, Patricia Koch. "He expected to like everybody. Some people don't care one way or the other, but when he met people, he liked them."
Patricia first met Bob at the deli counter in the 1980s as a customer. As time passed, they developed a friendship.
Then one day, Pat ordered a milk shake and paid for it with cash, only to have Bob give it all back in change.
"That's kind of how I eventually knew he was interested in me," she said. Four years ago, they married.
As Patricia quickly found out, running a deli is hard, time-consuming work.
With the shop open six days a week and Bob working long hours, "He literally didn't have a full day off," she said.
The couple relished their Wednesdays, when the deli was closed, sometimes going out to eat or hitting the casinos.
That's not to say Bob didn't love his job.
"I mean, you have to [love it] to be there that long and as many years and to greet people with enthusiasm," Patricia said. "You can tell when somebody's interested and likes what they're doing. After I got to know him, I knew that was his personality. Whatever he did, he was going to go in wholeheartedly."
For the entire Koch family, the deli was a labor of love, requiring endless effort, but ultimately worthwhile and producing lasting customer relationships.
"My mother and my father taught all of us to always treat people with respect, whether they're customers or good friends," Barry said. "And most of the customers became good friends."
A true testament to this philosophy, Bob Koch found not only his wife among his customers, but also his right-hand man for the deli.
Larry Dickerson got to know the Koch family as a West Philadelphia Catholic High School student, often skipping lunch to eat Koch's sandwiches in the afternoon.
"Wednesdays [when the deli was closed], I had to suffer with the [school] hot dogs," he said.
Over time, Dickerson developed a friendship with the family. After Lou died and the store needed extra hands, Dickerson began working for Bob.
"I came in here working for him not as an 'employee,' but as a friend," Dickerson said. "I've been a friend of his family for 38 years, and I just said, you know, 'I'll do this for you.' And the money was OK, too."
Since Bob's death, Dickerson has decided that he will continue running the shop for one more year, after which he plans to pursue his own financial-services business.
"It's the 40th anniversary of Koch's," he said. "I've been coming here for all but two of those years. But it's an institution, and I just want to keep it open."
Patricia and Barry, who share ownership of the deli, said they have yet to determine the specifics of the future, but expressed a desire to keep the shop open.
"Our goal right now is to keep the deli running in the same tradition if we can get the right help to do it, no matter who helps us or who gets involved in it," Barry said. "It's only going to be run in the same way it's always been run."
Since Sept. 8, the deli has been open only from Thursday through Sunday.
Hopefully, Barry said, the shop will be fully staffed and open with its usual six-day schedule by the end of October.
Meanwhile, all of Koch's loyal customers hope that the deli will continue to operate with the same friendly attitude that Bob Koch had.
"I guess my biggest fear is someone is going to try to run it for as much profit as possible and have the quality of food go down, and it will be more like a business and less like a friendly environment," Skinner said. "But I hope that doesn't happen."
For this year at least, the traditions will continue as they did before.
"I know what Bob wanted, I know what the family wanted," Dickerson said. "As far as running the store, I know what needs to be done."
When people come into Koch's, he said, they will continue to see the family's genuine happiness.
"We have to keep people happy. So in order to keep people happy, we got to be happy," Dickerson said. "Life should be that way anyway. If you're happy, people are happy around you."
Indeed, that's how life was for Bob Koch.
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