[Photo last week by Derek Berg]
B&H Dairy owners Fawzy and Ola Abdelwahed hoped to have their small lunch counter at 127 Second Ave. back open by now … and they were apparently a few inspections away from reopening.
However, this past Saturday during an inspection, the FDNY said that the B&H needs a new fire suppression system … which will push the opening back at least three weeks.
Fawzy and Ola have now taken to Kiva Zip, a crowdlending site for small-business loans to raise $10,000. The loan will go to repairs and renovations, employee salary and groceries when it is time for reopening.
On Kiva Zip, Ola writes that their 12-year-old son "is already looking forward to helping us, which makes me so happy! Maybe in the future he can continue the work like his parents, and continue to be the proud owner of B&H like his parents."
B&H, between St. Mark's Place and East Seventh Street, has been closed since the deadly gas explosion on March 26.
Previously on EV Grieve:
How to help 73-year-old East Village mainstay B&H Dairy get up and running again
7 comments:
I don’t know but I may be wrong. But are they only not allowed to open because they can’t cook, meaning what would be the point to open… If so, and if this means that people are allowed to sit in the restaurant. Why don’t they look into renting a food truck for the next 3 weeks. There are plenty of websites out there that do short term rentals. I am sure, even though they would not profit a dime as it would effectively be paying 2 rents. But it would get them back up and running in the short term…
Hope the b&h crew read this, as it is a solution that might actually work….
The fallout from landlord malfeasance just goes on and on.
It's as if someone is deliberately sabotaging their re-opening. Are you telling me that every single restaurant in NY has a fire suppression system? And why is it the responsibility of the Abdelwaheds to have to install it?
Anonymous 9.19 I like your idea. The check cashing store did the same thing for months. Unfortunately his landlord won out and Jaime couldn't keep it going. Another very veteran loss to the Nabe.
Running both a foodtruck while also overseeing the renovation of a store is a terrible idea for a number of reasons, the main one being it's an insane amount of work. Running a food truck on it's own is insanely expensive and a ton of work. And what - they're going to be running all the ingredients through the store while the ceiling is totally open and the water system is being installed? Where do people come up with these ideas that food trucks are so easy breezy? People who run those things have a system and that system takes quite a long time to get up and running.
I'm concerned that people are drawing analogy between running a food truck and a check-cashing place that sits in a trailer. Pretty sure check-cashing places are not subject to the same regulatory oversight as a place that slings chow.
Grt that support money also got raised via smallknot so $35k plus $10k (Kiva) and more money coming in from various sources should keep them going.
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