The Harlem Businesses We Lost To The Pandemic

HARLEM, NY — As the year ends, Patch is taking a look back at the beloved neighborhood businesses that closed amid the difficulties of the pandemic — including many in Harlem.

People around the city are mourning the losses of hundreds of neighborhood eateries, which have seen their finances suffer during the city's economic crisis and the near-total absence of indoor dining.

In October, as Chris Saphire prepared to shutter his coffee shop on the north end of Central Park, he told Patch that the closure of his shop "feels like tragedy to us."

"We built what we thought would be our little neighborhood oasis, a life where we worked together and had our baby around," said Chris, who ran Little Bean Coffee along with his wife, Claire, and their young son.

Little Bean was one of two Harlem coffee shops to close that week, along with Shuteye Coffee on 116th Street. They came on the heels of a handful of other cafe closures, like Double Dutch Espresso and Caféine, which shut down in September after four years on Frederick Douglass Boulevard.

In May, Caféine owner Kfir Ben-Ari also closed his French bistro RDV-Rendezvous Harlem, just a few blocks south. He told Patch at the time that traffic had dropped by nearly 70 percent.

"Ninety percent of the regulars left," Ben-Ari said. "Some new people came, but it's very few."

Other closures have included, in no particular order: Fairway Market by the West Side Highway, Sushi Inoue on Malcolm X Boulevard, the Ethiopian restaurant Zoma and the taproom Hop House, both on Frederick Douglass Boulevard.

The crisis has even been hard on chain stores — this month, a study found that 40 national chain retailers shut down locations in Harlem in 2020, among more than 1,000 such closures citywide.

Amid the loss, there have been signs of resilience. NiLu, a gift shop in Central Harlem, started an outdoor market to support local artists, musicians and other creatives struggling to scrape by during the pandemic.

But stories like that are the exception, not the rule — one July study found that one in three New York City small businesses may never reopen after the pandemic.

Industry advocates have called on the U.S. Senate to pass the RESTAURANTS Act, a bill with bipartisan support that passed the House in October and would provide more than $100 billion in grants to independent restaurants, small chains and catering companies.

Ben-Ari told Patch in September that many of his fellow Harlem restaurant owners were grimly contemplating their futures in the neighborhood.

"People are wondering whether to keep trying, or to move on like I did."

Related: Pandemic Closes 2 More Harlem Coffee Shops: 'Feels Like Tragedy'

Which neighborhood businesses will you miss the most? Let us know in the comments.

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