You’ve probably heard it while scrolling: “Yo chef, can I get a wagyu chopped cheese?” The line has become a familiar hook in videos filmed inside Prospect Park Deli, a neighborhood staple that, over the past year, has turned into one of Brooklyn’s most recognizable deli backdrops online.
“It’s literally this month, makes it a year,” Yazen says of when the deli first started creating content. Early on, the approach was simple. “We used to make regular cooking videos with no audio. It was completely different from what we do now.” Then came a turning point. “I decided to make a video where one of my friends orders the wagyu chopped cheese. The video blew up, and we just went with it from there.”
Consistency followed. “We try to post every single day,” Yazen explains. One person walks in, then another, and suddenly, “people see other people coming in. It’s just like a domino effect.” Each platform grew differently. “It really just depends,” Yazen says.
The inspiration to go online wasn’t about rebranding the business, it was about showing what had already been there.
“We’ve always had the wagyu menu before we started recording,” Yazen says. Customers were the ones who pushed the idea. “A lot of people will come in and tell us, ‘Yo, we’ve never seen a wagyu beef menu. Why don’t you guys throw this on social media?’” So they tried it. “We tried it once, and I guess it worked.”
Behind the viral moments is a long family history. “This was always a family-owned business,” Yazen says. “My dad owned it for 33 years. He started working here when he was 16 and then bought the store.” Yazen and his brother Adam grew up in the deli, working after school and during breaks. For their father, it was a place to learn early: “how to use money, how to save money, and how to speak to people.”
For Yazen, deciding what kind of content to make came down to one thing: entertainment. “The content that we create is more entertainment than actually making sense,” he says, laughing. Over time, they began to notice a clear pattern in their audience. “We try to aim for younger audiences. We have a large younger audience, and they make up a large part of our audience.” Yazen says. That trend is especially pronounced on YouTube. “Most of our videos are watched by kids. We’re on YouTube Kids, YouTube Education. I don’t even know how it happened. It just did.”
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That unexpected audience has shaped everything from tone to editing. “So we try to keep it clean now. We don’t let nobody curse, nothing really crazy,” Yazen explains. The structure of each video is intentional, built around holding attention at all costs. “You can’t have dull moments, bland moments, or a moment where somebody will swipe away.” Every clip is designed to move fast. “They’re edited and recorded in a way where there’s something happening every single second- you can’t swipe away.” The result is content that’s “fast-paced, loud energy, gets you hooked, and then boom, the video’s over.”
While the videos feel spontaneous, Yazen says they’re carefully planned and selective. Guests are booked in advance through email or Instagram DMs, and while requests are constant, “we’re very picky with who actually comes and films.” What matters most isn’t follower count, but presence. “We just look at your Instagram profile: do you have a personality?” he says. “The videos aren’t really about food, it’s about the guest.”
Energy, humor, and character are key. “Can you be funny? Can you be annoying? Can you act crazy?” Yazen adds. “You can’t be boring.”
New York City culture is at the core of everything Prospect Park Deli puts online. Yazen says the videos aren’t really shaped by the immediate neighborhood as much as by the city’s attitude as a whole. “We try to keep it real, the New York style,” he explains. Most customers are locals, and when people come in from out of state, the contrast becomes part of the content. “If you’re from Chicago, we’ll have you act like how people from Chicago act,” he says, but the baseline is always the same: a fast, loud, unapologetically New York energy.
That authenticity has translated directly into growth. While the deli has always benefited from its location near Prospect Park, Yazen says the sandwiches were “never this good” in terms of demand. Now, people actively travel to try the food, with customers coming daily from places like Chicago, New Jersey, California, and increasingly, from overseas. Social media helped cement the identity, too. When people hear the name Prospect Park Deli, Yazen says they immediately think of the wagyu chopped cheese. “We engraved it in people’s brains.”
That sandwich, he explains, is pure New York. The chopped cheese has always been a city staple, and the only way to evolve it without losing its soul was to upgrade the meat. “You can’t really change much,” Yazen says. “So when people hear wagyu chopped cheese, it’s automatic: ‘I have to go try that.’” The setting reinforces the idea. The deli has never been renovated, preserving the OG bodega look. “If it’s not broken, don’t fix it,” he says. Walking in feels like old-school New York, except now, they’re serving wagyu.
Behind the camera, the operation is also a family effort. While Adam is the face viewers recognize, Yazen stays out of frame by design. “When people see my brother, they flip, because he’s the one in the video,” Yazen says. “I can’t do his job, and he can’t do my job.” Yazen handles everything behind the scenes: filming, scheduling, scripting, and directing what gets said on camera. “I’m the cameraman. I’m the social media manager,” he explains. “Everything but being in the video. I can’t cook.”
The videos lean into that same image: bodegas, delis, real New Yorkers ordering food in real time. Featuring customers has only strengthened the relationship with the community. Neighbors repost, buy merch, spread the word, and often ask to be in videos themselves. “Everybody’s showing love,” Yazen says. That sense of togetherness, and the city’s relentless pace, is what he loves most. “New Yorkers just keep it real,” he says. “People think we’re mean, but we’re actually nice.” He wouldn’t leave the city for anything. “I love the rush. I love always having something to do.”
The scale of that reach still surprises him. “I thought 30,000 views was a lot,” Yazen admits. Now, some videos have reached tens of millions of views, with more than a billion views across platforms combined. “We definitely did not expect that.”
Looking ahead, Yazen says the next chapter is about playing the long game. Rather than moving away from what works, the goal is to expand it: shifting Prospect Park Deli from being seen as a business to becoming a personality people feel connected to. “I want people to think of a person, not just a store,” he says. That means more personality-driven content and new formats that build connection beyond the counter. Long-form YouTube and deeper storytelling are next. What started as a joke has grown into something real, and Prospect Park Deli is just getting started.
