Across Brooklyn, culinary businesses are cultural institutions, community gathering places and economic engines. From Caribbean eateries in Crown Heights, to Yemeni coffee shops in Bay Ridge, to pop-ups and carts throughout the borough, each business carries the identity of its neighborhood while creating jobs and opportunity for its neighbors.
Brooklyn has led the recent small business boom in New York City. Over a five-year stretch, neighborhoods including Bedford-Stuyvesant, Crown Heights, Williamsburg, Bushwick, Clinton Hill and Fort Greene accounted for a net increase of roughly 1,000 new small businesses, which was more than the rest of the city combined. Many of these are food businesses, part of a citywide industry that supports an estimated 500,000 jobs.
Growing up in Brownsville after emigrating from St. Vincent and the Grenadines, I learned early that food was more than nourishment. It was at the center of every celebration. It was often the welcome offering into a new home or community. Food remains a connection to home and heritage and a path to discovery. Each new dish I tried taught me something about the larger city and the cultures and communities living alongside my own.
For many immigrants, food is the first step on the affordability ladder to employment, entrepreneurship and economic mobility, from a line cook to a chef, a street vendor, a caterer or a delivery worker. Yet the entrepreneurs behind these businesses often struggle to navigate the city's support systems to access the resources they need to sustain or grow their businesses.
In the first half of 2026, two different businesses had to make a public plea for support ranging from Flatbush to Crown Heights. While both were met with heartening responses, no business owner should have to reach that point alone, as it becomes unsustainable in the longer term.
What if some of Brooklyn's most important resources for food entrepreneurs aren't banks, investors or government agencies?
Brooklyn Children’s Museum has launched CRISP, our Culinary Residency & Incubator Support Program, a residency program for food entrepreneurs. Through CRISP, entrepreneurs reside in the BCM café for several months, gaining direct access to 15,000 to 20,000 monthly visitors equating to as many as 80,000 new customers over the course of the residency. A $100,000 grant from the Wells Fargo Foundation allows us to waive fees for our resident businesses, purchase essential equipment for residents to use and host resident-led workshops where children and families experience culture through food.
The BCM café was recently home to Rogers Burgers, a Caribbean-American burger concept with Haitian roots founded in Flatbush by Josue Pierre and Jonathan Pierre-Lafleur.
Since our pilot began in 2022, we have supported more than a dozen local food businesses this way, from Hello Bakery to Savvy Bistro to Emma's Torch, a café that provides culinary training to refugees. Each resident realized growth in its customer base, revenue and connections to larger communities while BCM continued to fulfill its mission, both accomplishments at the same table.
Programs like CRISP prove that cultural institutions can generate economic opportunity within and for their communities. Our borough and New York City at large need a wider and stronger ecosystem of support to help our food entrepreneurs in Brooklyn, from immigrant communities and in the city at large.
Brooklyn's food entrepreneurs should not have to navigate today's challenges alone. To any museum, gallery, community center, library, garden or theater curious about how this works: our door is open and we will gladly share what we have learned. In return, Brooklynites discover new tastes, treats and favorites to support, enjoy and share. Most importantly, our borough's children grow up in more economically stable and vibrant households and neighborhoods.
Brooklyn's next great restaurant, bakery or food brand may not get its start in a commercial kitchen or a venture capital office. It may get its start because a community institution opened its doors and decided to become a partner.
