‘GrandLo Cafe’ Kickstarts Crowdfunding Campaign Ahead of Winter Debut

Photo: Grand Street Settlement

The Grand Street Settlement is a couple months away from opening GrandLo Cafe at Essex Crossing Site 6. In the meantime, however, the social service institution has jumpstarted a Kickstarter campaign to assist completion of the nonprofit coffee shop concept (aka “nosh for profit”).

All of the donations collected – roughly $7,600 of the $25,000 goal has been collected – will go towards supporting the job training for 60 area youths between the ages of 16 and 24. “Our job training will follow an evidence-based curriculum that provides hands-on barista, food prep, and cafe management training as well as life skills group and one-on-one coaching,” Communications Manager Erica Wong tells us.

The Settlement further points out that “The cost to incarcerate a person at NYC’s Rikers Island for one month is $17,417, while our [GrandLo] program is a fraction of a cost to tax payers.”

As previously reported, the Grand Street Settlement is to operate both the onsite senior center and the 2,500 square-foot GrandLo Cafe on the ground floor of 178 Broome Street. (It shares the overall commercial space at Site 6 with a $32.9 million, 55,000 square-foot outpatient hospital for NYU Langone.) Contrary to prior reports, though, we are told that the new entity is not officially a joint venture with Think Coffee, but that its “founder has been helpful to us and is part of the cafe’s advisory committee.”

GrandLo should bow early next year.