Corporations, Artisans Love Selling the Brooklyn Food Brand

We know about the annoying Manhattan restaurant that's peddling Brooklyn-themed food, but today the Times takes a look at all the ways that big corporations outside the city are also cashing in on the borough's artisanal boom, too. This includes a Gap-sponsored Brooklyn-inspired pop-up gift store featuring an exclusive line of Mast Brothers chocolates, a Ford ad campaign starring an editor of arts/food newsletter Brooklyn Based, and that episode of the Martha Stewart Show where she went to the rooftop farm. For the most part, the bearded artisans are happy about all of this. The head pickler from Brooklyn Brine, who just inked a wholesale deal with Williams-Sonoma explains: “I touch everything that goes into every jar?I’m pouring the vinegar in every jar, I’m putting the lid on every jar — it’s the real deal.“

Vogue’s Jeffrey Steingarten compares the trend to a similar fascination with food from the Napa Valley, twenty years ago. He remembers that “a lot of it was awful?Some of the early restaurants were really awful, and yet people wrote about them.” And not every artisan is cashing in. The team from Williamsburg retail outfit Brooklyn Kitchen have turned down Manhattan expansion offers, and see the realities of the food culture very differently. Owner Harry Rosenblum asks “Do they think we’re all sitting around drinking coffee and talking about food?”
· Brooklyn, Now the Brand [NYT]
· All Brooklyneer Coverage [~ENY~]
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