[식품]골드만 삭스, Brooklyn Flea의 새 식품 시장을 지원하다

Food

Goldman Sachs Backs Brooklyn Flea's New Food Market

By Claire Suddath on February 21, 2013

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-02-21/goldman-sachs-backs-brooklyn-fleas-new-food-market#r=nav-r-story

If helping to secure supplies of blood orange-infused donuts and 1960s manual typewriters can be called “doing God’s work,” as Goldman Sachs (GS) Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein once described his calling, 

then the firm is on the side of the angels in Brooklyn. Last April, Goldman’s Urban Investment Group put up $25.6 million to renovate a former Studebaker service station on the edge of the Crown Heights neighborhood. The 150,000-square-foot space will eventually house, among other things, a food and beer hall run by Brooklyn Flea.

Goldman’s partner in the venture is Brooklyn Flea co-founder Jonathan Butler. Since he and business associate Eric Demby staged their first event in a schoolyard in April 2008, Brooklyn Flea has grown into a collection of weekend indoor and outdoor markets where vendors sell vintage items, crafts, and all manner of edibles. The venues, all in Brooklyn, draw more than half a million customers each year. To date, more than 20,000 people have applied to be vendors. On a weekend when the weather’s nice and throngs of young couples and families mingle amid stalls peddling terrariums and strawberry-rhubarb ice pops, the business can gross up to an estimated $60,000 from alcohol sales and the $120 to $225 daily fee vendors pay for its 200 stalls.

Word of Butler and Demby’s success has spread to other U.S. cities. “We’ve had a zillion people ask us to expand,” says Demby. “They tell us that the Brooklyn Flea brand has national cachet.”

For now, at least, the pair of Brooklyn residents is sticking close to home. Over the past three years, Brooklyn Flea has supplied food vendors for Central Park’s summer concert series, and since this past fall, some regulars have been invited to set up shop inside a Whole Foods (WFM) store in Lower Manhattan. “There’s a rising consciousness about food, health-wise. People want high-quality food, and they want to know where it comes from,” says Butler. “Our partnership with Whole Foods proves there’s increasing mainstream validation to this.”

Butler, a former vice president for hedge fund development at Merrill Lynch and founder of the popular Brownstoner real estate website, is so confident that artisanal food is more than a passing fad that he spent some of his own money to buy the $11 million building in Crown Heights. (A development company, BFC Partners, footed most of the tab.) Butler says he didn’t tap his Wall Street cohorts to get Goldman to put up the millions more needed to overhaul the space; an e-mail pitch did the trick.

“This is exactly the kind of thing we like to invest in,” says Alicia Glen, managing director of Goldman’s Urban Investment Group, which has poured $1.4 billion into U.S. inner cities over the past decade. “In New York City and Brooklyn in particular, there’s been a healthy resurgence in the residential sector, but that means there’s less space for small businesses and manufacturers.” Placing several vendors under one roof, as Brooklyn Flea’s Crown Heights food hall will do, lowers overhead costs.

Brooklyn Flea’s own expenses have shot up because of the project. The biggest cost of running the operation used to be the $15,000-a-month tab for fielding security guards at its weekend markets. “We sublet our office. We try to stay lean,” Butler says.

The five occupants of the new food hall, scheduled to open toward the end of the year, will be drawn from the network of smart, business-savvy food vendors that Brooklyn Flea has nurtured. Becoming a member of Demby and Butler’s club isn’t easy. “There’s an intense curation process you go through before you’re invited to be a vendor,” says Danny Lyu, who launched his Mexican sandwich stand Cemitas at Smorgasburg, the sprawling food markets Brooklyn Flea operates in the Williamsburg and Dumbo neighborhoods from April to November. “They want to know who you are, what your idea is, and then you have to cook for them before they’ll ever let you in.”

Butler is especially tough. “We’re not looking for the pitch, ‘I make great cookies,’ ” he says. “We want, ‘I found a market for these cookies, and this is what my logo looks like, and this is what my brand is.’ ”

The bottom line: A business that began as a weekend flea market in Brooklyn has garnered national attention and an investment from Goldman Sachs.

요약

 지난 4월, 골드만의 도시 투자 그룹은 Crown Heights 지역 구석에 있는 이전 Studebaker 휴게소를 개조하는 데 2560만 달러를 투자했다. 이 곳은 Brooklyn Flea가 운영할 식품과 맥주 홀로 활용될 것이다. 2008년 4월 Brooklyn Flea와 공동 설립자 Jonathan Butler와 Eric Demby이 처음으로 학교에서 이벤트를 개최한 이후로 주말에 모든 아이템을 판매하는 시장으로 성장해왔다. 매년 50만 명 이상의 손님들이 왔고, 2만 명 이상의 사람들이 상인으로 지원을 했다. 맥주 매출 $6만 및 200개의 노점에 대한 대가로 $120~$225로 순익을 올리고, 이들의 성공은 미국 전 도시로 소문이 났다. 

 지난 3년 동안, Brooklyn Flea은 센트럴 파크의 여름 콘서트 시리즈에 음식 행상업체를 공급했고, 지난 가을부터 몇몇 상인들은맨해튼의 Whole Foods 내에 입점을 제의받기도 했다. Whole Foods와의 제휴는 주류가 되었다는 것을 증명하는 것인 셈이다. 

골드만의 도시 투자 그룹의 상무 이사는 딱 우리가 투자하기를 원하는 곳이라며 말한다. 특히 뉴욕과 브루클린에서 주거부문에 건전한 재기가 있었지만, 이는 중소기업을 위한 공간이 없었다는 것을 의미한다고 말했다. 또한 여러 상인을 한 곳에 모이게 함으로써 간접비용을 낮출 것이라고 했다. 이 프로젝트 덕분에 Brooklyn Flea의 자비는 삭감되었다. 

 Smorgasburg에서 멕시칸 샌드위치 가판대 Cemitas를 시작한 Danny Lyu은 말한다. 이곳에서 상인으로 참여하기 전에는 까다로운 심사가 있다고.