Many people have been asking about the new awning and sign in the window that says "Ditmas Park Coffee" at Café Madeline. The cafe, which was opened in October 2010, was sold this past August and the new owners took over in October. New awning or no, official word on the street, straight from the barista’s mouth: “Café Madeline is keeping its name and same great food. The only change is that it will be getting a facelift over the next couple of months.” Oh, and they have plans to become a bar. No timeline on that development.
Who is the new owner, we asked? The same barista responded, “He is local. He owns a health food store—I think it’s on Cortelyou, but it could be somewhere else—but he owns a health food store.”
The owner of Natural Frontier, the health food store on Cortelyou, was not around when we tried to contact him, but the staff said it's not him.
We caught up with the former owner, Alexander Hall--who also owns Milk Bar in Prospect Heights and Bluebird Coffee on the Lower East Side--to find out why he decided to give up on Cortelyou Road.
I have very mixed feelings regarding Cortelyou rd. It was nowhere near as good a neighborhood to do business as Prospect Heights or the LES. Of course we had some great customers but way too many treated the cafe as their lounge rooms, sitting for hours in the air conditioning, using the internet and sipping on 1 coffee. Many customers would bring in their own food and try to eat it without us seeing. This became increasingly frustrating.
As for Jack. Well that’s a whole other frustration. Still to this day I don’t know why this guy’s disgusting behavior is tolerated. He vandalized our store, threatened my staff, stood at the front of the store and yelled at the customers. Many of the business owners in my block would tell me to leave him alone, he is part of the community, as would some of the local residents. I often called the police to come to get him away from the store only to have them not arrive. Even at my store in the Lower East Side we do not have idiots like this making a nuisance of themselves, he was one of the reasons we wanted out of Ditmas Park.
My 2 other cafes are trading well. Our bakery at Bluebird is now starting to supply other cafes in Manhattan and we have started a retail line.
We are about to sign a lease on a new larger store which will be called Milk Bar like our store in Prospect Heights.
I don’t think it was unfriendly or disrespectful, I just don’t think that the customers were aware of what it takes to run a profitable cafe. Don’t get me wrong, Cafe Madeline always made profit and I made money in selling the business, I was just frustrated as it seemed everyone that lives in Ditmas Park thinks it the best neighborhood in Brooklyn and its just not.
I’m sure there will be negative comments, people love to hide behind their words, I know exactly what they will be saying.
When asked if we could post his emails, Alexander responded, “It's about time something interesting was put on that blog!”
That’s the spirit!
