Wednesday, May 18, 2011

New East Village Brewery hopes to win you over with a stolen menu

On Monday, we reported that something called the East Village Brewery and Beer Shop hopes to take over the space at 14 Avenue B. We even ran photos of the menu the budding brewers taped to the front door.

Well! As several readers noted in the comments, the menu was exactly the same as two-star Brooklyn restaurant Prime Meats.

Indeed, Eater did the detective work today, and put the menus in a side-by-side comparison.



Exact matches.

The brewmasters were on Monday night's CB3/SLA agenda, but the committee postponed the vote because "the secret investors were not present, they couldn't identify where they were going to get the stuff to build the brewery and they had no brewmaster."

Plus, they don't have a menu, apparently.

Off to a fine start!

12 comments:

Lisa said...

Someone should contact Prime Meats and ask if they are aware of the fact that the menu they spent time and money putting together has been hijacked (unless some of them are secret participants in this Avenue B brew-ha-ha).

esquared™ said...

i suppose instead of will 'cook' for a liquor license, they will plagiarize for a liquor license

if they are too lazy to create an original menu (even if it's just made up one), who's to say that they'll be actually doing some cooking, should that liquor license would have been granted to them

T.E.V.B. said...

i broke a story on EVG! WIN! ok i can officially retire now.

however let's keep in mind the "secret investors" COULD be the Prime Meats people. two of their other spots (Frankies, Cafe Pedlar) are just down the street on Clinton. if so, not a stolen menu. if not, douchebags.

EV Grieve said...

Nicely done, T.E.V.B.! I meant to follow up on this one myself!

HEY19 said...

I would def welcome the Frankies people to this side of Houston. People who rip them off? Not so much...

Roger_Paw said...

Does T.E.V.B. stand for The East Village Beagle? Beagles are symbols for detectives. Nice work!

Marty Wombacher said...

@T.E.V.B: Great work! Are you up for doing any investigative work on Gruber MacDougal?

@Lisa: Love the "Brew-ha-ha" comment! Good one!

Oliver Yun said...

@EVG, @Roger_Paw, @Marty: Thanks!! T.E.V.B. actually stands for "Take East Village Back" (really). But "The East Village Beagle" is good too! Loving the concept and imagery...

@Lisa, @Marty: "Brew-ha-ha" = HA! Definitely a good one.

Shawn said...

If its discovered they STOLE it, just to dupe CB3 into a full liquor license, then the State Liquor Authority needs to get their butts down here and start shutting doors. This has been going on for a while and I'm mad as hell and am not gonna take it anymore.

Saying one thing with another intention is the definition of fraud isn't it?

If they didn't steal it, they should at least do a perp-walk like our IMF friend, just for fun!

Anonymous said...

If not the same owners, the restaurant may have a copyright of the layout of the menu but not of the content, so technically they are not breaking any law. I doubt these people are going to invest money of a business that could be shut down for lack of compliance with the terms of the license.

Anonymous said...

They have to comply with whatever they get approved for, otherwise they would lose their investment. The liquor authority website says that place has a license until 2012. These are business people, they are not gonna have the space empty losing money. It's better to have a commitment of what they newcomers are going to do and make sure they do it than taking the risk of the current owners opening whatever they want under the current license.

Anonymous said...

@anon 10:45 - that's a ridiculous argument.

Are you one of the secret silent investors?

Or perhaps you manufacture brewery equipment?

Oops now I know who you are — the brewmaster!!

Probably from Portland.