- The Flying Saucer Cafe’s part-owner, Ivan Sullivan. (Alex Eriksen/The Brooklyn Ink)
Coffee, Hold the Recession
Ivan Sullivan wishes he’d opened a bar instead.
The Flying Saucer Café on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn Heights hasn’t made a profit all year and for Sullivan, a part owner, it’s taking a toll.
Since becoming a partner in the café last year, Sullivan’s worked every day of the week to just break even. A bar in this neighborhood could take in $100,000 in profit a year, he says, easy.
The Flying Saucer looks a bit like a bar, one built by beat-poets. There’s a worn leather sofa up front and a few tables and chairs in the back. It all looks like what $20 can get you on Craigslist. Sullivan, 32, is a lanky man with a deep island tan. A smile flashes across his face whenever a customer walks in, and when they leave it reverts to a tired expression.
For now, he is selling macchiatos instead of martinis, and relies on an army of regulars (80 percent of his customers) to keep his business afloat. The café’s looking to get a license to serve beer and wine but hasn’t gotten it yet.
“Coffee I have down to a science,” says Sullivan as he pours a latte into a glass mug. “I’m selling 45 pounds a week now, I want to get that up to 85.”
Sullivan’s surprisingly laid back for a small business owner in today’s economy. He’s got a deliberate way of working, something he’s had some time to perfect.
At age 12 he worked in a restaurant. It was a hotel in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, where he grew up. He started out busing tables, earning a few dollars an hour.
He remembers President Bill Clinton eating in the restaurant. He doesn’t remember what he ordered, but that he came back again the next day. Ivan likes to think he inspires repeat customers.
More than 20 years later he’s still at it. Now Sullivan makes the food, brews the coffee, and loads the dishwasher. He brings in part-timers to help out and ends up paying them before paying himself.
”When you work for yourself you have to be a passionate person,” he says. “They’re the kind of person that would go down with their business, go down with the ship.”
He doesn’t see himself as sunk just yet, but admits the occasional wave rocks the boat. For instance, when someone from Con Edison walked into the café and demanded a $1,400 deposit or else they’ll shut off the power.
Or when his bank told him to not bother asking about a line of credit. “It doesn’t make any sense, they said I had to be in business for at least two years,” says Sullivan.
He’s only got himself to look to for help, though. What politicians have to say about small business doesn’t do much for him. “If they could give businesses their first year tax free that’d be amazing.” Would it happen? “No, never.”
He says he thinks of selling his share in the café, if it were profitable, but for now is holding on. “I’m totally optimistic.” Business is up 20 percent on weekends from last month. “That’s why I save these,” he says as he picks up a paper cup stuffed with slips of paper. They’re orders for the salads they just started offering. Sullivan’s hoping this year he’ll need a bigger cup.
-Alex Eriksen
Mitchell’s Soul Food
Mitchell’s Soul Food, a restaurant on Vanderbilt Avenue in Prospect Heights, has a loyal local clientele. Its owner, Johnsie Mitchell, has been in business since 1983. Initially she sold pizza, hot dogs and hamburgers, but began offering her popular soul food in 1987. She says that the neighborhood has supported her nicely since the year she started.
But she is feeling the economic strain the rest of the nation is experiencing.
“Ever since August, the business has been on the slow side,” Mitchell says. Many of her customers, she adds, are cooking at home because they cannot afford to pay restaurant bills.
“I guess people don’t have the money they used to have,” Mitchell says as she takes a customer’s order.
Small booths line the left and right sides of the restaurant; a cash register and cakes sit atop the counter at the back. Behind the counter is a small window that reveals the kitchen. Business may be very good two days a week, she explains, but a restaurant cannot operate only two days a week.
Between 2007 and 2008 she says the amount of business would wear her out, but it has slowed in 2009 and 2010. Most of the week Mitchell gets virtually no business. She says that there have been a few times where the restaurant will go three straight days with almost no customers. She says the weekends are the best days of the week.
“They was talking about raising taxes on small businesses again,” Mitchell says about politicians. “We pay enough taxes as it is. If they keep taxing small business they gonna run small business out of business.”
She has not yet decided whom to vote for, she adds, but will choose whoever is on the side of helping small businesses like her own.
A handful of customers drift into the restaurant over half an hour. Most people know exactly what they want on the menu, suggesting these are among her loyal customers. “I’m hoping things will look up more next year,” Mitchell says.
– Joe Deaux
The Waiting Game
There was one person everybody wanted to see at Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s election rally and it wasn’t Andrew Cuomo. Instead it was President Bill Clinton. He was in Brooklyn last week at New York City College of Technology to stump for Cuomo and to reassure uneasy souls.
That Clinton, whose party has been suffering mightily during his first midterm election as president in 1994, was preaching to the choir seemed to make no difference: He was making the case for patience. Patience in voters who he feared were growing frustrated and may be getting restless enough to change their minds.
“I know that a lot of people don’t feel better now,” he said. “We’re in a gap here. There’s always a gap between when people do things and when people feel better. And people hire the Democrats to fix things.”
But Amanda Pizzuti, 25, from Sheepshead Bay, had kept her faith in the administration. “I want to do what we’re already doing, but better,” she said.
But not everyone is as content as Pizzuti. Just as quickly as the Democrats swept congress four years ago, the growing sense that Republicans were poised to take it back has dominated this year’s election coverage.
Clinton is well aware of this.
“What was the very first thing they did?” Clinton asked, when Republicans last held power. “They got rid of what balanced the budget, the pay-as-you-go rule, which said: If you want to do some of the things in mind, have the guts to go to the American people and say you got to raise the money to go do it.”
Clinton was asking for some more time. What he got, for the moment, was a reprieve for his party, The crowd shouted “Cuomo! Cuomo! Cuomo!” But then, that’s what many had come to do.
-Lynn La
Going Broke For a Living
Jacob Silver, attorney at law, sits behind his desk and talks about people suffering.
Behind him is a rack of folders, about two-dozen or so, each one with a name on top. Silver, a bankruptcy lawyer, has a lot of new clients.
“I take the stress away,” says Silver. “They’re finally able to exhale.”
Silver’s a short and energetic middle-aged man with glasses; he’s not wearing a tie, at least not today, and has a brisk, no-nonsense way of talking. He’s been in the business since the 90’s, and things are as bad as they’ve ever been.
People are falling behind on mortgages and credit card payments, and losing their jobs, their homes, and their businesses. Collection agencies hound nearly all of Silver’s clients, sometimes even while they’re sitting in his office.
Five years ago, meetings with clients were a lot shorter. Cases last longer thanks to the BAPCPA, the Bankruptcy Prevention and Consumer Protection Act, or as he puts it “the new bankruptcy law.” Passed in 2005, it makes it more difficult to file for bankruptcy. When before you could file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and have most of your debts forgiven, the new law forces businesses and consumers to file Chapter 13 bankruptcy, where debts are only discharged after a portion of them have been paid.
“What Congress is doing is they’re punishing Jacob Silver,” he says, picking up a packet of paper on his desk. “Six years ago this was 25 pages. Today it’s 50.”
He blames credit card companies for lobbying Congress for tougher laws. Now there are additional filing fees, mandatory credit counseling, and more time to be spent in the courtroom.
He doesn’t like the new rules because they add stress to an already stressful situation. One of his clients has a $100,000 medical bill for a heart condition. He only makes $30,000 a year which means he will never be able to pay off the debt in his lifetime. “Those collection agencies are calling him and it’s going to kill him eventually,” says Silver.
For his part, Silver works out payment plans for his services and is flexible when it comes to the price. He declines to say how much he made last year. He says there are too many cases, some at different prices, to count.
When will things slow down for Silver? Not until private sector confidence is restored, he says. “You can’t hire your way out of a recession,” says Silver. Government stimulus programs are no good in his book; he says his clients want steady employment, not handouts. Regulation has weakened businesses’ ability to hire; they’re afraid to invest, waiting to see what the tax rates will be like.
He leans back in his chair and lets out a sigh. “There are people who go floor-to-floor in this building, door-to-door, with resumes, looking for jobs,” he says. “It’s pretty bad.”
Behind him is a pair of large windows and through them you can see Brooklyn unfold from the 12th floor view. Across the street is the courthouse and past that the sprawl of buildings that is Brooklyn. People are sitting on the steps of Borough Hall, eating their lunches. On Jacob Silver’s desk is a large strawberry dipped in chocolate, lying uneaten on a piece of tinfoil.
-Alex Eriksen
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