Pop-ups are shaking up the New York City service industry.
Words by Kendall Cohen
It wasn’t until October 2020 that Jessica and Trina Quinn aspired to cook professionally from their nine-by-six foot kitchen. Before the pandemic began, the Quinns were working at two of 2019’s most celebrated restaurants in NYC. Jessica was the executive pastry chef at Rezdôra, a New York Times three-star restaurant in Manhattan, and Trina was sous-chef at Brooklyn’s famed Red Hook Tavern. When COVID-19 began in March 2020, Trina was immediately furloughed and Jessica chose to leave Rezdôra after staying on for several months and taking a significant pay cut. The married couple, forced to reimagine their careers, got entrepreneurial. Last October the Quinns launched Dacha 46 from their Bed-Stuy apartment, a pop-up which serves a rotating weekly menu of Eastern European comfort food inspired by Jessica’s Ukranian-Latvian roots.
Operating a pop-up in a NYC apartment kitchen presents a unique set of challenges. You won’t find the couple working on a batch of blinchikis together—Jessica says their kitchen only has room for one person to work at a time. The Quinns also do their dishes by hand, because their fourth floor walk-up doesn’t have a dishwasher.
Jessica and Trina are resolute in taking the precautions necessary to keep their customers and themselves safe amidst a global pandemic. “We’ve taken the mentality of working in a restaurant and translated it to our home. We wear gloves and masks. Everything is sanitized and clean and we get regularly tested for COVID,” Jessica says. Customers pick up orders for house pork pelmeni, Dacha’s take on the traditional Eastern European dumpling staple, from their stoop during designated pick-up times. Dacha requires all customers to wear masks when picking up orders.
Pop-ups are roving restaurants without a permanent brick and mortar location. In pandemic times, pop-ups serve their food to-go or, depending on the location, outdoor seating is provided. Their ephemeral nature creates low barriers to entry for their proprietors; without the responsibility of paying rent on a permanent location, overhead costs are kept low.
For many service industry workers who lost their jobs as a result of the pandemic, ingenuity and adaptability has given way to a new wave of pop-ups in NYC. When the pandemic began, hosting pop-ups was about survival. Now, chefs realize the pop-up model provides them with a newfound sense of creative freedom they find more fulfilling. Many who started pop-ups in response to the pandemic say they don’t want to return to working in restaurants and see pop-ups as a viable way to address an already broken restaurant industry.
Sadie Mae Burns of Ha’s Đậc Biệt, a “Vietnamese Bistro” pop-up, feels that the restaurant industry is in need of a “fundamental overhaul”. Sadie Mae believes pop-ups are a vehicle to facilitate this necessary industry shift. In August 2019, Sadie Mae and her partner, Anthony Ha, started Ha’s Đậc Biệt from a pushcart attached to a bike on the sidewalks of Brooklyn. Anthony, who is first generation Vietnamese, and Sadie Mae were inspired by their travels together in Vietnam. Before the pandemic forced the couple out of work, Anthony cooked at Frenchette in Manhattan and Sadie Mae at Roman’s in Brooklyn. They hosted their pop-up sporadically, whenever their work schedules permitted. Now the duo are operating Ha’s Đậc Biệt full-time.
Anthony and Sadie Mae discovered a newfound ability to make their work collaborative and community-oriented, incorporating their friends and family whenever possible. Anthony’s mother sometimes comes into NYC from New Jersey to help cook. One friend of the couple designs their fliers, and others help take orders and run food.
Ha’s Đậc Biệt hosted a pop-up last October at Bluefield Farm in Blauvelt, NY, where they served lamb cooked on an open fire. The pop-up was born out of their desire to support Sadie Mae’s friend who is a sheep farmer in Great Barrington, MA. Sadie Mae’s mom provided flowers for the pop-up, grown on Bluefield Farm, through her flower business, Festoon.
“This year institutionalized the word pop-ups,” says Howie Kahn, host of “Take Away Only”, a podcast about the hospitality industry in crisis that launched at the onset of the pandemic. COVID caused mass unemployment throughout the hospitality industry, forcing chefs to pivot to a pop-up model in order to make a living while enabling patrons to enjoy food safely outside of traditional restaurant spaces.
According to Kahn, a chef’s identity is rooted in feeding people and if that capability is taken away, so is their selfhood. Pop-ups became a way for chefs to maintain their sense of selves in a time of crisis, states Kahn. Where they were previously tethered to fixed menus and catering to investors, chefs can now cook foods with greater personal significance. Pop-ups give chefs the experimental freedom to test their concept because the financial stakes are lower, says Kahn.
For some chefs, the pandemic provided them with the time and energy to bring project concepts to life. Chef Susan Kim started her Korean inspired pop-up Doshi at Winner, an all-day cafe and bakery in Park Slope, last August. Doshi is nomadic, and has popped up in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Hudson, N.Y. since its launch. Born in Seoul and raised in Southern California, Kim’s cooking is inspired by her Korean roots. Doshi is short for doshirak, which is Korean for a packed meal.
“This time has fueled so much creativity and the space and time for cooks and chefs to play and collaborate. I’m giving a part of who I am with Doshi that I haven’t been able to do before,” says Susan. She conceived the idea for Doshi after she began visiting her parents biannually in South Korea, where they retired. “The concept [for Doshi] has been marinating for two years now. It’s not until the pandemic until that really made me say, ‘the time is now,’” says Susan.
For many pop-up chefs, creatively expressing themselves in the midst of a pandemic means cooking the food they are nostalgic for. Dave and Krystiana Rizo are the couple behind Yellow Rose, a San Antonio style pop-up they launched in January 2020. Since its beginnings in Brooklyn, Yellow Rose has evolved into a brick and mortar East Village restaurant that opened last November. The Rizo’s, both San Antonio natives, devised the idea for Yellow Rose to fill a void. After moving to New York, they were surprised they couldn’t find the bean and cheese tacos that are “just a way of life,” back home, says Dave. Pre-pandemic, Dave worked at Superiority Burger and Krystiana at Emmy Squared. The Rizo’s both lost their jobs at the beginning of the pandemic, creating an auspicious moment to fully devote themselves to their pop-up.
At Yellow Rose, Dave and Krystiana elevate Texas fare, which Dave says is typically processed and made with cheap ingredients. You could go to Taco Bell and get a bean and cheese burrito for $1.29. Or, you could go to Yellow Rose, where $4 will get you bean and cheese taco made with refried Rancho Gordo pinto beans on a hand rolled Anson Mills Sonoran flour tortilla.
I went to Yellow Rose’s pop-up in February 2020, which was hosted at Doris, a self-proclaimed “San Antonio Spurs bar” in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. I arrived when the pop-up began at 5pm to a line almost out the door. As I looked at all of the people in front of me, I became anxious the bean and cheese taco and chicory salad would be sold out by the time it was my turn to order. I was spared, however. Others were not so lucky. The entire menu sold out that night. The food was soul-satisfying in its simplicity.
For chefs, pop-ups also provide a platform for activism and community-building that was previously inaccessible to them at restaurants. “A lot of restaurants are silent when it comes to social justice and I think we consciously make sure that we’re not. We’re letting people know our stance,” says Krystiana. Last June, Yellow Rose hosted a pop-up at Hunky Dory in Crown Heights where all food proceeds went to The Okra Project, a mutual aid collective providing support to black trans, non-binary, and gender-nonconforming people.
The pandemic exposed the fragility of a broken service industry, creating an opportunity for workers to reflect and hold restaurants accountable for long overdue change. As workplaces, restaurants are known to exploit underrepresented workers and are infamous for wage and tip theft. Stories of harassment, abuse, and poor labor conditions continue to emerge as the industry reckons with COVID-19. Those embarking on entrepreneurial ventures as a result see pop-ups as a way to champion a more equitable service industry.
For Krystiana and Dave, redefining the industry framework begins with “an awareness of the general well-being of people, where money is being distributed, and figuring out different avenues to do that,” says Dave.
This starts with the staff at Yellow Rose. “We want to make sure the people working for us are getting taken care of because that’s the foundation of our ideals,” says Dave.
For restaurants, sharing their space to host pop-ups provides additional financial insulation. Daniel Eddy, owner of Winner, consciously approached building an unconventional restaurant model. Winner’s Friends & Family Meal program intended to offer families “an easy, quick, and inexpensive solution for dinner”. Menus would be posted every Sunday for the week ahead and guests would pre-order, allowing Eddy to operate more efficiently by keeping costs lower. Winner opened the week before the pandemic forced restaurants to shut down. Friends, many of whom were out-of-work chefs, began reaching out asking how they could help. Eddy let chefs like Susan Kim cook Friends & Family Meal for the week, providing them with a creative outlet and moment of normalcy. With all New Yorkers ages 16 and older eligible for the vaccine since April 6th, the hospitality industry is beginning to imagine what a post-pandemic world will look like.
Susan Kim thinks pop-ups are here to stay. “COVID has illuminated what was already there. Running a restaurant in New York City, where the rent is through the roof, and providing benefits and a living wage to your employees is not possible. COVID is making us rethink the restaurant model and brick and mortar models period. How do we utilize and share spaces? I think that spirit is going to continue,” says Susan.
Though pop-ups by nature are ephemeral, they became a sustained financial lifeline to their proprietors and a pillar for community in uncertain times. As restaurants consider how to manage the risk of future crises such as COVID-19, the practicality of pop-ups cannot be ignored. Post-pandemic, Howie Kahn predicts pop-ups will become part of a sound business strategy further insulating restaurants against future unforeseen circumstances. Though their permanence remains in question, diners and proprietors alike will remember the comfort, hope, and survival that this wave of crisis-spurred pop-ups provided in the 2020-21 pandemic.
Kendall is a MA, Food Studies student with a concentration in business and social entrepreneurship based in Brooklyn. After graduating, Kendall plans to open a community-driven green grocery in Brooklyn. Find her @kendallcohen_.
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