Cafe senses big things brewing in Harlem

4/12/09
small business
By Ryan Chatelain

Cafe senses big things brewing in Harlem

Photo credit: Urbanite

By Lana Bortolot

Special to amNewYork

Now that Harlem has attracted national retail stores and new residential transplants, it’s drawing small-business owners such as Ntozake Lundy who feel confident that the neighborhood can sustain them.

Lundy says she waited for signs such as the arrival of luxury housing and a Bentley car dealership before transplanting Muddy Waters, her cafe with a social mission, from Brooklyn.

The cafe will open next week on the ground floor of 2185 Adam Clayton Powell Blvd., a new residential building.

“This is the next neighborhood — there’s no doubt about it,” she says. “And if you don’t get in now, you won’t get in.”

Lundy, 36, moved her cafe from Prospect Heights when her nonrenewable lease ran out and she couldn’t find a Brooklyn locale for less than $4,000 a month.

She landed in the Bedford Park, Bronx, briefly, but moved on when she found the area “not ready” for an upscale cafe.

In Harlem, Lundy pays about one-quarter the going price for similar space across the river. That’s in part because her business model allows her to register as a nonprofit organization, a requirement for occupancy in the building.Lundy staffed the cafe with referrals from Fortune Society, an organization that helps formerly incarcerated people re-enter society.

The Harlem cafe is a two-year pilot program that prepares staffers for opening their own Muddy Waters franchise.

“I want my staff to have the opportunity to make a living wage,” she said. “You have to think for the long term, and it’s not going to be about getting people in here to learn to make a latte,” she says.

In three of her previous locations, Lundy hired referrals from the Fortune Society and the former Lower East Side Partnership, a now-defunct assistance organization for substance abusers. She said she believes workers who have ownership over their jobs are less likely to offend again.

“I don’t really feel like I’m doing anyone a favor, I’m hiring people who have paid their debt and are trying to reinvent themselves,” she said, adding, “I’ve always known I was going to create my own situation and now I’m giving other people a chance to do the same.”

(Photo by Jason Andrew)
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Cafe senses big things brewing in Harlem

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