History of World Cafe Live
In the 1990s, Real approached WXPN with an idea to move the campus radio station out of its former cramped quarters in the old Potts Mansion at 3905 Spruce St. and combine resources with a concert venue to make a “house of music for Philly,” Real said.
WCL entered into a licensing agreement with WXPN to use the name “World Cafe.”
“I was puzzled why there weren’t more people over the age of 20 to 30 still going out to discover new artists and hear new music,” he said.
He envisioned “a place that you can go to that has the acoustics of a symphony hall but for jazz and rock ’n’ roll, has decent bathrooms, wasn’t smoky, great sight lines,” Real said. “You can get something good to eat and the show starts not at 11:00 p.m. but at 8:00 p.m., which was a novel idea back then. You can go home and go to work the next day.”
In 2008, Real co-founded the nonprofit Live Connections to augment music education in Philadelphia public schools. In 2019, the entire World Cafe Live operation became a registered nonprofit.
“That mission-driven work was so important to our team, to our staff, and to our supporters that that became a real driving force for us,” he said. “We wanted to do more and more mission-driven work and support it through the more commercial work we were doing.”
Under Hal Real’s leadership, in 2011 World Cafe Live reopened the long-dormant Queen theater in Wilmington, Delaware, and managed it until 2017. WCL pulled out because, as Real said at the time, the financial model was not sustainable. The Queen is now managed by its owner, Buccini Pollin Group.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Real co-founded the National Independent Venue Association to support music venues forced to shut down. NIVA lobbied Congress to pass the $16 billion Shuttered Venue Operators grant program, the largest arts granting program in history.