How the Community Is Standing Behind 175 Recently Displaced NYC Food Businesses

When Brooklyn-based food incubator Pilotworks closed abruptly last weekend, 175 small businesses were displaced. According to GrubStreet, Pilotworks sent an email to announce it would be shuttering “after failing to raise the necessary capital to continue operations," and gave members limited access to collect possessions over the following few days.

For businesses like Dominga, a cafe collaboration between chefs Lani Halliday of Brutus Bakeshop and Woldy Reyes of food service company Woldy Kusina, slated to launch in 2019, the sudden closure was detrimental to normal-course business. While a neighboring commercial kitchen has welcomed Halliday and Reyes, Dominga had to leave behind critical supplies.

"It affected so many small makers in their fledgling stages," says Halliday. "And it’s not just the businesses, it's the staff of Pilotworks as well—like the people who worked in the kitchens."

Accordingly, and hearteningly, friend-of-Dominga Alek Marfisi (a mentor to Halliday) launched a Go Fund Me page to crowdsource capital to get the business back up-and-running, which we learned about from community-minded media company Cherry Bombe. According to the Go Fund Me page:

Dominga needs $10,000, which will help them buy a $3,000 reach-in refrigerator, $2,000 worth of cookware, and $5,000 for a basic restock trip to Restaurant Depot.

The campaign has raised nearly $4,000 at the time of print, but still needs some help to reach its goal.

"We're really trying to stay positive and use this as a moment to be like 'here’s the fire'—we're scrambling, we haven’t been sleeping, we’re doing what we need to do to make sure everything’s going to continue functioning," says Halliday. "The whole community has come together beautifully in the aftermath to support the businesses."

The 175 formerly hosted Pilotworks businesses are also welcoming any leads on storage space, kitchen space, job openings for displaced team members, and more—you can post any helpful info here. We're inspired by the effort on behalf of Dominga, and we hope to see similar support for the rest of the businesses.

"I am so in gratitude and feeling galvanized by the far-reaching, deeply human support that’s been shown by so many people in the industry—and outside it—through money, kind words, legal help, all of that," says Halliday. "It’s been one person after the other reaching out to be like 'How can we help?' and that’s been just so beautiful to witness. My desire now is to connect all of the businesses and people affected with those resources—they need them, we all need them."

Have an idea to help any businesses affected by the Pilotworks closure? Let us know in the comments.