After six-plus months in business, Lab -320° has closed at 27 St. Mark's Place between Second Avenue and Third Avenue...
The owners announced the closure of the hand-rolled ice cream shop on Facebook on Dec. 30...
Lab -320° began its tenure as Lab -321, which did not amuse the owners of -321° Ice Cream Shop in Brooklyn ... who sent along a cease-and-desist letter. (And it likely didn't help Lab -320° that the popular 10Below Ice Cream opened up at 42 1/2 St. Mark's Place later last year.)
The previous longtime tenant at 27 St. Mark's Place, The Sock Man, closed last January after a reported rent hike via landlord Raphael Toledano. Sock Man owner Marty Rosen later opened a new location in late November at 99 1/2 St. Mark's Place.
Lab -320° was the fourth shop to open in 2016 in the East Village serving the traditional Thai street food ... Roll It Up on Seventh Street between First Avenue and Second Avenue closed in November for the season...
Signage on the gate points to an April 2017 reopening...
Thanks to EVG correspondent Steven for all the photos!
Previously on EV Grieve:
Here's the rolled ice cream shop taking over the former Sock Man space on St. Mark's Place
20 comments:
Is anyone surprised by this?
Jesus freak, people can't even go out of business honestly anymore. They ran out of stock and now the business is closed? Whoops. We ran out of light bulbs, guess we'll be doing this in the dark from now on. This is like when David Barton gym closed because they had competition.
MAY 2017 BE THE LAST DAY OF ALL BUSINESS.
I was hoping to try their sock-flavored hand-rolled artisinal locally-grown ice-cream some day soon.
Sockman is doing well down the block. Dropped in the other day.
Thanks to landlord and Baby Smurf lookalike Raphael Toledano, longtime tenant The Sock Man was forced to find another store so that a bunch of kids selling an ice cream product noone wanted could pay too much rent and go bust in just a few months. Now he's stuck with an empty storefront, and hopefully it stays that way until he sells all of his buildings. I tried their product, once, and the setup in there was so bad that there was no way they would ever make it. Can't wait to see whatever Burnt Marshmallow store or Lettuce Factory they rent to next. Note to landlords: When you have a good tenant, keep them, because it's amost impossible to find another one.
What a fucking joke. These landlords make their lives harder, by fucking with everyone else.
how long do these random ice cream/froyo places last, 4-6 months? seems like several close every winter.
"Con" anyone? Wonder if the rumor is true--these businesses are setting up to fail intentionally...
Even the owners of these businesses that closed should not be surprised. Rent is too Damn high!
Is this some sort of freaky art installation, a meditation on the fleeting nature of small business in Manhattan in the aught-teens? Those robotic facebook posts are just too much. "Dear all/we have finish all the ice cream in stock, now the business is close"
Good riddance to another useless "business". For a novel change, bring in something for those of us who actually live here long-term, willya?
I wish I knew nothing about running a business so I could be dumb enough to open up a desert related business on St. Marks.
Landlords should rot in hell for their greedy land grabs, but idiots that open businesses with no chance of success just exacerbate the problem and pass along their poor understanding of profit margins along to the consumer.
The rents may be too damn high, but the people who open these businesses that fail in six months to a year are too damn stupid. They clearly never took a course in entrepreneurship at Baruch College or anywhere else. Otherwise their self-indulgent fantasy--I like ice cream therefore everyone is going to like ice cream and run into my store and make me a millionaire--would have had a reality test. I can't help thinking that some of what is going on is laundering money. Nobody can be that stupid as to keep starting this businesses without noticing the failure rate. Perhaps one of these failed geniuses would like to post on EV Grieve and explain what in hell they were thinking--from the beginning to the end. Perhaps some of the 2016 debut stores: the snack shop at 22 St. Marks Place or the Marshmallow Lady would like to post and tell us how they are doing.
!
I don't understand why there is so much hate for the marshmallow place. An established mail order company, with years of proven success, run by someone older than 20, opens a base of operations, and people shit all over it. Maybe if it stayed open till 4 am, blasted music 24/7, served alcohol, and had garbage/grease/vomit all over its curb it would have a better chance of becoming a beloved neighborhood business.
Copy....it's out of control!
At 8:44 AM, Anonymous said...
I was hoping to try their sock-flavored hand-rolled artisinal locally-grown ice-cream some day soon.
It's "artisANAL"—got it? (Good.)
I have no interest in ever buying ice cream from a place with the word "Lab" in its name. (Not even if they're referring to a Labrador retriever.)
These are resume businesses. They are opened with investor's money. Then they close and go on the proprietor's resume. "Oh", the investor says, "let's see, you had a store in the East Village, Paris, London..." They never ask the next question, "How long were they open?. They just invest in the next resume business. There are plenty of people with money to invest. And they close because there are not enough consumers with money to buy. And nobody but EVer give a damn. WHAT A WORLD.
@1:06 PM. Oh get over it. Nobody hates marshmallows, but the idea that there are marshmam stores opening up now is symbolic of how businesses we used to rely on every day have been decimated by landlords who replace them with foodie concepts designed for tourists. You don't really expect local residents to frequent marshmallow and rolled ice cream and froyo and waffle shops on a regular basis, do you?
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