Greenpoint and Williamsburg Restaurants Fight Soaring Rents and Costs as Diners Cut Back

Behind every $20 crudo in Brooklyn lies an industry grappling with inflation, high rents, and shifting customer habits, raising questions about the future of New York’s beloved local dining.

There is nothing rare these days about paying $25 for a plate of raw tuna in Greenpoint. But what is new—and rather more sobering—is the knowledge that, for many restaurant owners, those eye-watering menu prices barely keep the lights on. “Our margins were already thin. At this point, you can see through them,” sighs TJ Gargan of Teddy’s Bar and Grill, one of North Brooklyn’s fixtures. Outward largesse masks mounting fragility.

Running a restaurant in New York City has always demanded grit and a gambler’s tolerance for risk. But lately, even seasoned operators reckon survival is more precarious than it has been for decades. The Covid-19 pandemic nearly shuttered the city’s restaurant scene; those who endured must now contend with inflation, new costs, and a customer base whose habits have irrevocably shifted. More than just nostalgia is at stake: restaurants are the soul of the city’s street life, but also vital cogs in the local economy.

It is not for want of desire that New Yorkers are dining out less. According to a 2024 survey by Toast, a restaurant software provider, over half of respondents reported cutting back on restaurant visits. The reasons are depressingly familiar. Grocery prices have jumped by 29% since 2019, and almost every cost facing restaurateurs—rents, utilities, wages, insurance, even grease-trap cleaning—now seems to only go one way. The result: many of the city’s beloved spots have fallen by the wayside in recent years. Sometimes personal circumstances play a role, but more often, closures are attributed to “a glut of increased costs across the board.”

While certain restaurateurs have cited rent as the executioner—Marlow & Sons, Pencil Factory, and Sippy Cafe have all pointed to exorbitant or rising leases—others, like Ramiro Lescano of Tabaré, are the rare exceptions. Situated in Williamsburg, Tabaré has enjoyed comparatively friendly rent terms. But Lescano acknowledges that, for most, the halcyon days are over. The past two decades have seen Greenpoint and Williamsburg transformed from up-and-coming frontiers to culinary and cultural magnets, attracting not only food lovers but also property developers. The area’s caché is at once blessing and curse.

As landlords seize on strong demand by ratcheting up leases, operators with anything less than an optimal arrangement face difficult arithmetic. A case in point: wages, which in New York City are set to rise again in 2025 with the minimum wage indexed to inflation. Staff deserve fair pay, but few establishments can pass on all their increased costs to diners—at least, not indefinitely. Too dear a dinner check, and even the most ardent regulars begin to blanch.

The squeeze has big implications not just for eateries, but for New Yorkers themselves. Dining out is often more than an indulgence: countless careers, families, and communities rely on the fabric the restaurant industry provides. A shrinking hospitality sector also means diminished diversity on the city’s menu, both literal and figurative. Neighborhood haunts that once served as informal gathering spots are shuttering, replaced by chain outlets or left as vacant fronts—a dismal trend familiar to many cities, but especially poignant in one that celebrates itself as a dining capital.

Looming above all is the spectre of broader economic malaise. Rising prices force budget-conscious diners to eat in or opt for cheaper takeout options, creating a feedback loop that drives down revenue for even well-established houses. In turn, these businesses must weigh either shrinking portions, raising prices further, or surrendering altogether. Asset-light models—ghost kitchens, delivery-only operations—may thrive, but they offer little of the atmosphere or serendipity patrons crave. Meanwhile, suppliers, gig workers, and allied trades suffer collateral damage.

Nor are these woes unique to Brooklyn. Hospitality businesses across America, from San Francisco’s Mission District to Chicago’s Wicker Park, report similar afflictions. But the pinch seems sharper in New York, where historically robust demand for restaurants now finds itself running up against a triple-whammy of high rents, post-pandemic caution, and inflation. Globally, cosmopolitan cities from London to Melbourne face their own variations of this trouble. Rentier capitalism knows no borders in the hospitality world.

A bitter aftertaste for the city’s social fabric

The prospect of fewer independent restaurants and more chains or vacant storefronts does not bode well for the social life of the metropolis. Chain outlets, with economies of scale and deep pockets, can better weather the cost storms, yet they offer little distinctiveness. The risk is a homogenized urban experience—one where every block looks and tastes much like the next, with character and risk replaced by bland predictability.

City and state authorities are not entirely powerless to help. Some mayors have mulled rent caps for commercial spaces, or offered grants to embattled small businesses. But such measures are easy headlines and tough policy: landlord lobbies wield formidable clout, and any effort to restrict market rents risks unintended consequences, such as reduced investment or shoddier infrastructure. More promising are regulatory and tax reforms that streamline compliance and reduce the barrage of non-wage costs—insurance, fees, and the like—that eat into profit margins but do little for the public good.

For their part, restaurateurs are hardly demanding protectionism. Most have survived by being nimble, embracing technology, paring down menus, or devising inventive collaborations. Yet they also need a constituency among policymakers who recognise that “just raising prices” is not a panacea—and that the sector’s health is linked to the broader city’s vibrancy.

There is a lesson here about limits. The city’s appeal rests, in part, on its density of daring and distinctive offerings. Squeeze too many of them out, and the virtuous circle—of residents, workers, and visitors feeding off one another’s talents and tastes—risks unwinding. The tyranny of ever-climbing costs is hardly unique to New York, but it is acutely felt here.

No city can—or should—try to freeze its culinary landscape in aspic. Change is inevitable, and the restaurant ecosystem will continue to reward the shrewd and the lucky. But if the city wants to preserve the rough-and-tumble diversity that made it a global byword for urban possibility, it will need to do more than toast the survivors. Empty storefronts and $25 crudo may be signals, not mere symptoms, of an economic model that is failing more than just its most visible victims. ■