Slippery Slope: Two Down on 7th Ave.
The big news in Slopeland today is that Tea Lounge is closing its location on 7th Avenue. The coffeehouse is calling it quits because its landlord wants to double its rent, according to a story in the Brooklyn Paper. Tea Lounge opened on 7th Ave. and 10th Street in 2001. The business isn’t the only…
The big news in Slopeland today is that Tea Lounge is closing its location on 7th Avenue. The coffeehouse is calling it quits because its landlord wants to double its rent, according to a story in the Brooklyn Paper. Tea Lounge opened on 7th Ave. and 10th Street in 2001. The business isn’t the only one saying sayanora to the South Slope: five blocks down, the crafts store Greenjeans is also clearing out. According to a post on the shop’s blog, the sustainable-wares store is “in the process of looking for a new location that will provide us with more space, more foot traffic, and greater accessibility.” Greenjeans has occupied a storefront on 7th Avenue between 15th and 16th streets for a little over three years, and it’s going to keep selling stuff through its website and at the Flea until it finds a new bricks-and-mortar location.
Tea Lounge to close in July! [Brooklyn Paper]
Greenjeans is Moving [Greenjeans]
Photo of Tea Lounge from Tea Muse.
A double rent would be hard for even starbucks. You folks are ridiculous to blame them for wanting to leave. If they stay you’ll complain about the over priced coffee.
Gorilla coffee is nasty burned tasting.
first off the tea lounge is a pretty dirty place,
I know the landlord is an old time local and i bet she didn’t ask an outrageous number. its just that the tea lounge has been paying way below market rent. they also picked up the shop for peanuts as another owner built it(short lived berries and beans) but knew nothing about coffee and sold the store and lease just to get out. They made plenty over charging for tea and coffee but you want to hate the landlord for renting it out for market.
how many of you are renting your apartments way below market. while i guess its some its not hte majority. and how many will list their house for below market price. after all why should they be greedy if they bought in for 1996 and get full market. greedy homeowners.
for the record i rent on 7th avenue pay 90 dollars a sq foot in a prime spot and do fine. you know why? people want to shop in my store. the stores that are closing offer nothing people want or are overpriced.
how many small stores have closed on 5th ave or smith street , or columbia or montague the list goes on.
2:42/3:15 – You don’t know the rent, so you can’t do the math.
2:56- Math
Tea Lounge is one of several dozen similar similar establishments with an overpriced poor quality product that cannot even pay prevailing market rents, who cares?
“The Tea Lounge owner’s decision to close has nothing to do with the rent”
And you know this how?
The Tea Lounge owner’s decision to close has nothing to do with the rent – but it is easier to try to maintain ‘street cred’ in liberal PS if you blame it on the evil, greedy Landlord.
I dont know how much his rent is or was – but if all else failed a small price increase would easily cover almost any rent increase – think about it if they sold 300 items a day (coffee, pasteries, cookies, sandwiches, etc) – which is really not a very good business and you raised the price by an average of a quarter – you could cover $2250 worth of rent increase monthly.
I’m a business analyst and have been living in this area for almost 5 years. I’ve seen stores come and go on this stretch. Along with Greenjeans, Rare Device recently closed, as did Nest. The Nest space wasn’t on the market for to long (rented to Goldy + Mac) so I don’t think it will take too long for the other storefronts to rent (unless the landlord of Tea Lounge has delusions of grandeur about how much they can get for the space).
Aside from the rent increase example of Tea Lounge, it really boils down to the fact that many of these stores sold things that people just didn’t want to buy, and their inventory didn’t change often enough. And while I admire what Greenjeans was about, the selection was too small, and just plain too expensive. Rare Device was too similar to Nest, and was too small of a location to make their mark.
Many of the restaurants there do pretty well, and you can see that the Union Market is thriving. I’ve even seen the little beer bar packed many nights. It’s tough to open a small business, so kudos to those that tried, and congrats to those who manage to succeed.
Tea Lounge clearly has an inferior business model if they depend on below market rents to turn a profit. Should the landlord subsidize a badly run business?