Vendors say goodbye to The Bowery Market

According to two now-former vendors at The Bowery Market, the open-air space on the NW corner of Great Jones is closing. 

Yesterday was the last day for the vendors, including The 88 Coffee Company, which said in an Instagram post that "the Bowery Market is also closing to evolve and change for the better."

In its Kettl Tea Substack published on Monday, owner Zach Mangan wrote: "This week marks the end of a chapter for Kettl as we serve our final guests at our Bowery outpost. The owner of the market has decided to sell the space to a developer and pursue a new direction." 

Kettl Tea has a new home in the works on Great Jones, "a true Manhattan flagship — one that builds on the foundation we created at Bowery and keeps us rooted in the neighborhood that has supported us for five years." 

There were no messages from Twig'm, which serves Korean street food (they remained open today), or The Alchemist's Kitchen, which was not open yesterday (or today).

Real estate developer Scott Marano opened the year-round outdoor food market in July 2016, with spaces for up to five new or established food businesses. 

In an email to EVG in May 2019, Marano shared his vision for the space, a former auto-body shop:

Creating The Bowery Market was a very important, long-held goal of mine. I have been part of the neighborhood since I was a child and I have seen how it has changed. There are a lot of great restaurants in our neighborhood, but there are not many places that serve really good food in a very casual environment or on the go. 

I wanted to create a place that people could come to several times a week at different times of the day to satisfy them and their guests. I also know the real estate market and how expensive and risky it is for a food producer and operator to open a brick-and-mortar. 

Therefore, I created small kiosks that provide a lot of exposure and opportunity to the operator, but are also easy and inexpensive to fit out. I wanted this to be somewhat of an incubator for food creators who don't have a lot of financial resources. I also wanted to provide an opportunity to do some fun short-term seasonal or experimental types of concepts. For this reason, I license the spaces on a mostly short-term basis. However, there are times we renew for additional lengths of time. 

We reached out to Marano yesterday for more details on what might be next for the corner space and the garage adjacent to it.