Milk Bar Will Close Both Brooklyn Locations

BROOKLYN, NY— Milk Bar, a longtime neighborhood cafe with locations in Prospect Heights and Park Slope, will close both Brooklyn shops by the end of the year, ending nearly two decades of business in the borough.

Kylie Sachs, who bought Milk Bar with several partners in 2016, announced the closures in a statement.

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The shops will remain open through the fall, with final closing dates to be announced once they are set.

The Prospect Heights cafe opened at 620 Vanderbilt Avenue, near Prospect Place, in 2009.

Its second location, at 204 Sixth Avenue near Union Street in Park Slope, opened in 2017.

The business began in a storefront that previously housed the Garden Café, a neighborhood restaurant Sachs remembered visiting with her husband shortly after they moved to Brooklyn in 2007.

Two years later, during the financial crisis, Milk Bar opened in the space.

Alex Hall, who founded Milk Bar, later opened Brunswick, a similar cafe near Prospect Park in Windsor Terrace, in 2014.

Sachs and her partners bought both businesses from Hall in 2016 after he moved to Des Moines with his family.

Sachs wrote at the time that Hall became a mentor as she learned how to run the cafes.

She described Milk Bar as a neighborhood fixture and a place where she could have breakfast with her daughter, read a book over coffee or spend a few quiet minutes alone.

Under Sachs, the business added the Park Slope location in 2017. The cafes became neighborhood stops for coffee, breakfast and lunch, with avocado toast among Milk Bar's longtime offerings.

The announcement described the decision as a chance to step aside and allow the two storefronts to be "reimagined."

The cafes will remain open through autumn and into winter.

"Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened," Sachs wrote.