BY ROSE ADAMS
The owners of the popular
fruit stand in front of Trader
Joe’s in Cobble Hill have traded
their sidewalk spot for a brickand
mortar shop in Bensonhurst,
where they’re selling
more than just inexpensive
produce, said one of the store’s
owners.
“We have every kind of item
— a little bit of Arabic, European,
Turkish,” said owner
Barı sh Avcı, who opened King
Fruit on the corner of 18th Avenue
and 67th Street three weeks
ago with his brother. “We have
stuff to touch every person, not
just Americans.”
King Fruit’s grand opening
comes about seven years after
Avcı, a Kurdish man, moved to
the US from Turkey. Soon after
his arrival, Avcı got a job working
for a fruit vendor in Manhattan,
but he and his brother,
a yellow cab driver who had
moved to the US a few years
earlier, decided they wanted to
open their own stand, he said.
“We didn’t have much
money. We didn’t want to work
for someone else, so we said,
‘Let’s start a fruit stand for ourselves,”
COURIER LIFE, F 6 EBRUARY 19-25, 2021
Avcı said.
The brothers opened their
stand on the corner of Atlantic
Avenue and Court Street outside
Trader Joe’s in 2015. The
cart quickly became popular
because of its low prices, which
Avcı’s brother scored by buying
produce wholesale from Hunts
Point in the Bronx with a group
of other fruit stand owners,
Avcı said.
The stand’s success allowed
the brothers to open a
second stand near Borough
Hall in Downtown Brooklyn,
which thrived for years. But
when the COVID-19 pandemic
hit, foot traffi c around Downtown
Brooklyn and Cobble Hill
plummeted, forcing them to
shutter their stands and scout
out new locations in southern
Brooklyn, where the high-density,
residential neighborhoods
promised a more steady fl ow
of customers. (There is now
another fruit vendor outside
Trader Joe’s, Avcı said.)
The brothers settled on a location
on the corner of 18th Avenue
and 67th Street in Bensonhurst,
and set up a stand there
in the fall, Avcı said. The cart’s
immediate popularity inspired
the brothers to rent an empty
storefront in front of the cart,
where they could open their
fi rst ever brick-and-mortar
store.
The move was only possible
because the COVID-19
pandemic had lowered the area’s
commercial rents, Avcı explained.
“Before, there was no way
we could rent a store. After
COVID, a lot of businesses
came down and the land owners,
they don’t want to keep the
Barısh Avcı (above) and his brother opened King Fruit in Bensonhurst
earlier this year. Courtesy of Barish Avcı
store closed.”
Since the store’s grand opening,
business has been good,
Avcı said. He rents an apartment
in the neighborhood, and
his brother travels down from
his place in Carroll Gardens to
work at the new location. Even
Avcı’s sister and parents, whom
Avcı and his brother brought
over to the US, come to help out
every now and then, he said.
And to the customers’ delight,
the prices have remained
as low as they always were.
“Business is good. It’s very
busy because we’re keeping
the price the same as the fruit
stand,” he said. “It’s better than
we were expecting.”
Fruits of their labor
Former Trader Joe’s fruit stand owners
open grocery store in Bensonhurst
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