Gentrification in Brooklyn, One Bodega at a Time

Gentrification in Brooklyn, One Bodega at a Time
by Lisa Chow

NEW YORK, NY —Rising rents and housing prices are changing this city. Much of the discussion has focused on the residents moving out of certain neighborhoods and into others. WNYC’s Lisa Chow looks at businesses at the front edge of gentrification in Brooklyn, and sees how they’re managing the change.

REPORTER: The Papa and Sons bodega stands at the busy corner of Flatbush Avenue and Lincoln Road, an express stop on the B-Q train. On the same block, there’s a new coffee shop and restaurant. Both opened last year, replacing a Trinidadian restaurant and a hair salon catering to black women. The bodega is trying to adjust to the new customers in Prospect Lefferts Gardens.

CROUSSET: White people, they like a lot of organic

REPORTER: Francesco Crousset has been running Papa and Sons for 12 years. He started stocking organic milk a few months ago.

CROUSSET: This neighborhood we have everything. We have blacks, Hispanics, Arabs, Caucasians, Jamaicans, Haitians. So when they come to us, I don’t like to say I don’t have.

REPORTER: On this afternoon, most people come in to play the lotto.

CROUSSET: They’re looking for the 177 million today.

REPORTER: Lester Johnson shops at Papa and Sons 3 times a week. He’s lived in the neighborhood for more than a decade.

JOHNSON: It has what I want. It may not have everything I want but it has basically milk. Some of the vegetables are not bad. Some of the canned foods you get is not bad.

REPORTER: It’s also a stop for Rashad Hines, who goes to school a few blocks away. He’s 13.

HINES: The store it makes great sandwiches cause like, they always melt the cheese. That tastes real good. They got real nice people in the store like if we don’t have enough money, they just let you go.

REPORTER: The manager says his top selling items are …

CROUSSET: Sugar, coffee and soup. You know, like canned soup. Like Campbell’s. That’s fast fast.

REPORTER: That, may change. Bilal Solmaz runs Pacific Green Gourmet, a corner grocery store in Brooklyn’s fully gentrified Cobble Hill.

SOLMAZ: Now we are selling fancy fancy soup. It’s called Wolfgang Puck. You know him, right?

REPORTER: Solmaz walks over to his soup section, where you can get all kinds of varieties of Wolfgang Puck soup.

SOLMAZ: Before we had this, we had Campbell’s and Progresso. I had those. And I put them away because they don’t sell. They just stay there forever. Campbell’s especially.

REPORTER: He canceled those product lines in 2002.

SOLMAZ: I put them on the shelf. I put like crazy price, 99 cents. Just get rid of them you know. And I get this Wolfgang Puck. There is organic. There is regular. And it sells great. My customers are happy. I’m happy and Mr. Wolfgang Puck is happy.

REPORTER: Solmaz says when customers suggest new products, which they do every day, he researches them, gets samples from suppliers, and watches to see if they sell in his store. He works with more than 200 suppliers. He goes to Manhattan on his days off, to see how stores there are stocking their shelves. He prefers to have stuff that nearby stores don’t have, so that he’s not competing on price. And with his limited store space, there’s a tradeoff in every decision he makes. For example, he’d rather sell Spanish-imported tuna for 20 dollars, than 99 cent-tuna.

SOLMAZ: I don’t work for 40 cents. You have limited space. You cannot waste your two line, half of your shelf for 40 cents.

REPORTER: Solmaz wouldn’t give specific sales numbers, but he did offer a minimum. He says the store brings in at least two and a half million dollars a year. The store in Prospect Lefferts Gardens has double the space but brings in a million dollars less. The manager there explains where he goes to get ideas for new products.

CROUSSET: I go to Park Slope because it’s an area where there are more white people. I see the merchandise that they have in the stores, and it’s something I’d like to have too.

REPORTER: Jennifer Sun moved to the neighborhood from the Upper West Side, eight months ago. She says she goes to Papa and Sons when she needs something quick, or when her car’s stuck in the snow and she can’t go out to Park Slope or Costco. She says with a few changes, the store could attract more business from residents like her.

SUN: The location is awesome. It’s right on the corner but the outward appearance and inside appearance of the store isn’t as clean as we go to a C-Town or we go to another grocery store in Park Slope.

REPORTER: The manager says he’s planning a full renovation of the store this fall.

CROUSSET: I want to fix the floors, fix the aisles, the shelves, and the refrigerators.

SUN: Their mix of items is so great. The fact that they have so many low end products that totally don’t appeal to us make me feel like they’re in this transition of trying to serve 2 different populations of people. You know for example, they’ll have a can of spam, which I know is very popular for some people but we would never eat that. And you know, part of me says I would not want to go to a grocery store that sells that.

REPORTER: Not stocking certain items doesn’t appear to be on this manager’s to-do list.

CROUSSET: As I add products that my white customers want, my business grows. At the same time I still have the products that my black and Hispanic customers use.

REPORTER: The neighborhood is at a crossroads. Crousset knows his rent’s going to go up and he’ll need to increase his profits, so each decision he makes right now is critical. Spending 100-thousand dollars to renovate the store may mean a loan, and more risk. Right now he works with 10 suppliers. He’ll have to build new relationships as he sells more products. Doreen Howe moved here a year ago from Park Slope and she offers her wish list.

HOWE: Definitely coffee beans, different kinds of bread products that are a little more, it doesn’t even need to be organic, but a little more varied, the cheeses, and I guess organic vegetables.

CROUSSET: Maybe she no see, the other side …

REPORTER: I told Crousset she wanted organic vegetables. Crousset walks me over to another aisle. He points to rows of canned vegetables.

CROUSSET: You see organic sweet pea, organic green bean, organic Kenney corn. You see, we start.

REPORTER: But do you have any organic fresh vegetables?

CROUSSET: This one I have to ask the person at the market. I don’t know. Do they have organic fresh vegetables?

REPORTER: He says now, he has to make those orders too.

For WNYC, I’m Lisa Chow.