Next Door Closes Its Doors

Teary eyes graced Next Door’s dining room Sunday night as pizza-lovers took in the sights and smells of the beloved pizza restaurant for the last time. It was Next Door’s last day in business before closing its doors forever.

It was hard to watch people be disappointed, said Doug Coffin, Next Door’s owner and the ​“last one standing” of its founders. The popular Jocelyn Square spot, heir to a series of neighborhood watering holes dating back to Prohibition, was known for its crisp New Haven-style pies, an extensive beer and spirits selection, and cozy digs that housed concerts and trivia nights.

“I kind of felt it was my job as the owner to keep it going,” he said, looking around the room as people enjoyed pizza and exchanged memories. The restaurant, in his words, has ​“always been just shy of really being successful” in the seven years it’s been open. According to Coffin, surviving in the restaurant industry requires a mix of talents, where the odds are against you. ​“Sometimes it works out, and sometimes it doesn’t,” he said. He finally decided last fall to retire.

As one door closes, another might just open for Israel Lopez, a Next Door employee who started working with Coffin’s businesses 18 years ago. He is hoping to start running his own restaurant in Branford, taking over an active restaurant there and going in with a rebrand after the busy season. 

Lopez was originally slated to take over Next Door after Coffin’s retirement, a plan that would have kept the restaurant from closing at all. He was all set with a new logo and fresh ideas for the place, thinking everything was ​“100 percent,” when the arrangements fell through with the landlord. Lopez said he wouldn’t have been able to pay the new asking price for rent.

Fans of the Big Green Truck, the pizza truck business associated with Next Door (and which actually came first, hitting the scene in 2003), can rest easy knowing that that mobile business is unaffected by Next Door’s closing. Coffin sold that business to longtime employee Liane Page in 2021.

Up high in the Next Door dining room Sunday evening, a chalkboard displayed a heartfelt farewell from Coffin to his loyal customers. ​“Thank you all for your support, your laughter, & your love!” the sign read, along with an extra ​“I’ll miss you all!” added on the side.

“It’s a family day,” Coffin said; his kids, grandkids, and wife had all been in the space that night. Lopez’s friends from the gym where he does Jiu Jitsu and Muay Thai came as early as 3:30 p.m. to wish him well. The place didn’t even officially open until 4 p.m.

As the night wore on, rules got looser. Servers took their ​“one last selfie”s by the bar, regulars sighed and remarked to strangers as if they had already been in mid-conversation, and Lopez poured out shots for whoever was left. The speakers blasted music from the 2010s. The kitchen ran out of one item, then another, never to be replaced.

Lopez called Coffin ​“a great person,” someone who felt like his own father. ​“There was a lot of good in the stuff I did,” Coffin finally said, after thinking through everything he had managed to do over the years. Though he might wonder how things would have looked if he had made this or that financial decision, the thought exercises have little point to them; money was ​“never my primary motivation.”

There was a time when Next Door even had a $9.95 large cheese special. Coffin remembered how people would go up to him to say that kind of thing really made a difference in their lives. Good food and prices people were able to afford — ​”those are the things that really matter to me.”

What’s next for the Next Door crew? ​“Seeing what else is going on in town,” Coffin said, mentioning storytelling, writing, and gardening. His yard, he said, has ​“suffered years of neglect.” As the weather warms up, Coffin is looking forward to getting his hands out of the dough and into the soil.