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Photo Credit: Linda Rosier
New York’s next hot food hall is also a manufacturing space.
The Brooklyn Navy Yard announced six more food tenants for Building 77 Monday — and while the name might be pretty plain, the offerings inside won’t be.
“You’ll be able to go and really see how food is produced and see that people are manufacturing and making stuff in New York,” David Ehrenberg, president and CEO of the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation, said in an interview.
In addition to the two anchor tenants, Brooklyn Brewery and Russ & Daughters, the building will also be home to outposts of Brooklyn Greenery, a Prospect-Lefferts Gardens juice joint; Rustik Tavern, a Bed-Stuy comfort food spot; The Food Sermon, an acclaimed Caribbean restaurant in Crown Heights; Tiny Drumsticks, a commercial kitchen-for-rent and caterer; We Rub You, a Korean BBQ stand that started at Smorgasburg; and Grandchamps, a Bed-Stuy Haitian restaurant.
All of those restaurants will manufacture food or beverages on-site, as well as offering them for sale to people who want to eat and drink at Building 77. The Navy Yard says Building 77 will create about 3,000 jobs, about 150 in the food hall.
The Navy Yard, aimed at housing high-quality manufacturing jobs, is home to 7,000 workers, a number that will soon grow to 16,000 people in need of good lunch options each day — so seeking food companies that would both create food manufacturing jobs and serve food to employees was a way to “have your cake and eat it, too,” Ehrenberg joked.
Rawlston Williams, owner of The Food Sermon, said he will use the new space to create deeper flavors — cooking over wood, for example — as well as to make and bottle hot sauces, teas and juices. The Food Sermon also cater from Building 77.
“Sometimes the space dictates to you what you can do,” he said in an interview, noting his original intention was to run catering out of the Crown Heights restaurant. “It just took off at such a level where the community responded in such a way that we had to adjust and become a restaurant instead of a catering place. This opportunity with the Brooklyn Navy Yard allows us to do all of the above and then some.”
And for Williams, that’s a dream come true.
“I was a little boy from the Caribbean who migrated to the United States and who really just wanted to do something, so that you could just have a decent name,” he said. “To really have this opportunity to do something even bigger, it’s a wonderful thing.”
Here’s a look at the restaurants and vendors — including the anchor tenants and two other kiosks — that will set up shop in Building 77, opening in mid-2017.
