After five-plus months in business, Nobletree Coffee abruptly closed on May 30.
According to a note from Nobletree here on the northwest corner of Second Avenue and St. Mark's Place, they were forced to close "because of the slow foot traffic at this location."
Given the busy corridor here, that reason left some residents rolling their eyes.
And now someone has added their own note to the Nobletree storefront (thanks to EVG reader Todd O'Brien for the photo!) ...
"Please don't blame the neighborhood for slow foot traffic. Maybe it was your mediocre coffee and bad service?
Sincerely,
East Village Residents
8 comments:
I found this note weird and eye-roll-inducing as well, but I loved their coffee and found the service always great. I was very sad to see them go BUT slow foot traffic? odd.
Slow foot traffic at that spot? That's funny. That place sucked.
Dear Note Maker: please don’t include the East Village residents who actually liked having an independent cafe shop
as an alternative to Starbucks.
The problem isn’t that there’s slow foot traffic on that corner, the problem is that the foot traffic passes by much too quickly. And for the record their coffee was pretty good. The other problem was the only two tables were mostly taken over by people with laptops and the rest of the seating was bar stools. Even with the Starbucks on 9th St closing down they couldn’t make it. Now the laptop brigade has descended on The Bean, which at least enforces the policy that you have to buy something if you’re going to sit there all day.
Coffee was great, service was good.
Was it Tolstoy who wrote a story "How Much Land does a Man Need"? I went to this coffee shop once or twice--my question would be how many coffee shops does a neighborhood need? Of course they are all serviced by likeable people and serve decent coffee, etc etc etc. Keeping up with Tolstoy, how much foot traffic does a shop like this need? I am sure everyone who invests in a food service business makes an argument to themselves and to potential investors that they have the formula for making a success of their enterprise. In reality, food service businesses are the most difficult to keep going (every so often an EV Grieve posting lists all the closings). Sad that some nice young people lost their jobs. But I doubt that this was a career for life job.
Cafe's suck now, you used to be able to go and relax, maybe even talk to someone, but now if you find a seat most likely there will be some pod next to you having the same boring conversation over and over on their lil cellphone.
The service was trash specifically a dude that just sits on the counter and doesn't recognize you until you alert him and the coffee is over priced in comparison to neighborhood prices
Porto Rico is right across the street, serves excellent and inexpensive coffee, has genuinely nice kids working there, and does just fine with the "slow foot traffic."
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