BY BEN VERDE
Emmanuel DeJesus hasn’t
been able to pay rent for his
Nostrand Avenue coffee shop
since September.
“It’s almost impossible
to meet the bottom line with
those numbers,” said DeJesus,
owner of Furman’s Coffee
near the border of Crown
Heights and Bedford-Stuyvesant.
“It just takes a toll on the
whole process of trying to get
a product out to a customer.”
Harming his business the
most, he said, has been a precipitous
drop-off in foot traffi c
along the commercial corridor
dating back to the coronavirus
outbreak last March. “It just
seems like a lot of our clientele
has left the city,” he said.
In addition to rent, the shop
is also behind on its electric
bill by several months. Before
the COVID-19 pandemic, DeJesus
employed nine people in
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the shop. Now, the coffee afi -
cionado — whose love for java
began in the Dominican Republic,
where he worked on his
grandmother’s coffee plantation
growing up — employs just
two, and works nearly 90 hours
a week while raising two kids.
More than a year into the
pandemic, DeJesus said, his fi -
nancial trouble doesn’t stop at
the shop. The small business
owner says he is $500k in the
hole, and now struggles to pay
rent at home and put food on
the table for his children.
“Not only am I not making
rent there, but I’m not making
rent in my apartment or having
the funds to feed my family,” he
said. “It’s been pretty rough.”
Furman’s landlord has been
lenient about the business’ inability
to pay rent, DeJesus
said, but bills are piling up for
property owners, too.
“They’re depending on the
rent to pay their mortgage as
well,” he said. “So essentially
if I don’t pay the rent, that’s
another small business that
will go under.”
Like many independent
eateries, Furman’s was not yet
profi table pre-pandemic, deeming
DeJesus unable to qualify
for any federal Paycheck Protection
Program funds. The
shop is applying for a new
round of restaurant-targeted
funding from the federal Small
Business Administration this
week, but DeJesus hopes more
is done for struggling small
businesses like his.
Furman’s, as a minorityowned
business, is hardly alone
in their struggles. A recent survey
conducted by the nonprofi t
Local Initiatives Support Corp
found that nearly three-quarters
of minority-owned businesses
in New York City fear
closure if they do not receive
Furman’s Coffee is one of many minority-owned businesses struggling to
stay afl oat one year into the pandemic. Photo by Caroline Ourso
some sort of fi nancial support.
The survey also found that
minority-owned businesses
lost nearly a third of their
workforce throughout the pandemic,
and that more than half
were unable to pay their rent.
According to the group’s
executive director, Valerie
White, the problems affecting
these businesses existed long
before the pandemic, and were
only further exacerbated and
brought to light by it.
“The term ‘recovery’ means
getting back to the place where
you were prior to the incident,
the crises,” she said. “But for
these businesses, they were
not at a place of equity.”
Inequities, White said, include
a lack of access to capital funding
and even things like high-speed
internet. For the city’s recovery
to be just, White argues a concerted
effort needs to be made
to bring these businesses back
stronger than before.
“Where there is crisis there
is opportunity,” she said. “Now
we have the opportunity to
build up these strong foundational
commercial corridors.”
For DeJesus, the only way
he can forsee his business
pulling through is with concrete
government assistance.
“Ultimately the government
has to step in and help us
out,” he said. “I think it’s the
only way to see any shift in
what’s been happening.”
UPHILL BATTLE
Survey says minority-owned businesses
face steepest climb to recovery
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