Fleishers Craft Butchery Shutters a Year After Mass Employee Walkout

Fleishers, the pioneering tristate butcher shop, has officially shuttered after never fully recovering from the pandemic and an employee walkout last summer, Grub Street reports, when the company’s lead investor, Robert Rosania, allegedly instructed CEO John Adams to remove signs supporting the Black Lives Matter and LGBTQIA+ movements across its stores in New York and Connecticut in July 2021. Nearly three dozen employees staged the walkout as a result, and the shop’s Park Slope flagship did not reopen until eight months later. The company, as Adams told Grub, is currently “negotiating with suppliers and landlords and hopes to ‘close the business gracefully.’”

The original owners, Joshua and Jessica Applestone, launched Fleishers in 2004 in Kingston, New York. Within a few years, they helped popularize what the New York Times dubbed “rock star butchers,” known as much for their nose-to-tail slaughtering as their tattooed forearms. The Applestones sold the company in 2013.

On the chopping block

One of Chinatown’s oldest meat shops, 47 Division Street Trading Inc., hopes to avoid eviction by raising $150,000 via a GoFundMe campaign. The family-run butcher shop, open since 1995, caters to the area’s residents and is known for its affordable prices.

The wave of Starbucks unionization arrives in Brooklyn

A Starbucks on North Seventh Street in Williamsburg is the latest location of the coffeeshop chain to unionize, according to Greenpointers. It’s also one of the only Brooklyn outlets to join more than a dozen shops across the U.S. where employees voted to join Starbucks Workers United.

Pass the chocolate caramel tart, please

Less fancy and more basic will continue to be the mantra for restaurants when it comes to desserts, pastry legend Claudia Fleming shares with Resy. The former Gramercy Tavern chef, known her for chocolate caramel tart among other sweets, joined Danny Meyer’s hospitality group last year. Her best seller at Ci Siamo? The lemon torta.

Find a slice of old New York in...Ohio

The bright, canary yellow Gem Spa sign now shines in a 19th-century farmhouse just outside of Columbus, Ohio, EV Grieve reports. Its new owner, who splits his time between NYC and the Midwest, swooped up one of the cigarette-and-candy shop’s iconic letters after it shuttered during the pandemic.