Dog friendly coffee shop Boris & Horton (510 Driggs Ave.) announced that they will officially close at the end of the month, according to an Instagram announcement.
Boris & Horton only just opened a Williamsburg location in 2023. They started with an East Village location.
The team first announced the closure in February, but quickly mounted a crowdfunding campaign in order to keep the space alive. The campaign asked for (and received) $250,000, but it apparently wasn’t enough to sustain the business.
“This was not a decision we made lightly. We tried partnering with other local businesses, hiring an events manager, adding more programming, and other ways to bring in foot traffic, but despite our best efforts, sales have just been too weak to support the store,” owners Logan Mikhly and Coppy Holzman wrote on Instagram.
Many customers shared positive comments and memories of the space, but a few had concerns about what happened to the money from the fundraiser, considering how quickly the cafe raised the money and made the decision to call it quits shortly after (one Reddit user said that they felt “completely lied to and misled by the owners.”)
In response, the Boris & Horton team told us in a statement:
“The funds were allocated to pay the salaries for a General Manager and an Events Manager and to make some repairs to our East Village location including updating our HVAC system and some refrigeration so we could continue to run through the warm months.
Specifically, our goal with the Events Manager was to build up our event programming at both locations, particularly in the evenings, to maximize revenue for all hours of the day. Fortunately, this has paid off at our East Village location, but sales in Brooklyn are worse than they have ever been.
The investments from the campaign continue to be vital to keeping our doors open, and while we are devastated that the investments in Williamsburg didn’t yield the results we had hoped, our East Village location is staying open and would have 100% closed otherwise.”
Of course, keeping a business afloat in the Greenpoint and Williamsburg area is no small feat. Rents are up, inflation continues, and competition is fierce. But generally, those are problems beyond what a quick influx of cash can solve.
Here’s hoping for smoother sailing for the East Village location!
This seems incredibly suspicious – if they were soliciting donations for the Williamsburg location, was it made clear they intended to use those funds for the East Village location? If not, that feels inherently wrong. Also, the salary cost would be nominal since it would’ve been for a month or two since they started fundraising. If I were a donor, I’d ask the relevant authorities to look into this fundraising activity.