Despite Economic Downturn, Small Businesses Prospering in Clinton Hill

If you look long enough, you can find small businesses thriving in Clinton Hill despite the now years long economic downturn. Two such businesses that have been growing over the past few years recently joined together to share production space: Salvatore Bklyn and Early Bird Food & Co.

It doesn't matter whether or not you've seen them coming and going from their new shared production space at 20 Grand Avenue, on that industrial block between Flushing and Park; they know their businesses are growing just the same.

Betsy Devine has slowly grown her ricotta cheese business, Salvatore Bklyn, starting with friends, and Blue Apron Foods was her first real customer, so to speak. That was her "A-ha" moment, when she realized she was getting somewhere with her ricotta cheese. She tells me that it "blew our mind to believe that not only would a shop buy our cheese, but then people who visited the shop would buy it too!"

Since then lots of local shops we see around the borough, such as Grab, Marlow and Daughters, Green Grape Provisions, Stnky Bklyn, The Meathook and Saxelbys Cheesemongers have helped her and her ricotta cheese get out of the back of Lunetta's kitchen-where she worked out a deal with owner Adam Shephard to use it in the off hours to make her ricotta cheese-and into her own space, with a great view, high up in a building in Clinton Hill.

Restaurants have taken a liking to her ricotta cheese too, such as Felidia, Del'Anima, Per Se, and the 4 Seasons. Ms. Devine tells me the latest new client to ask her for a batch of her ricotta cheese is Eataly, "...and they get some foot traffic, man! They sell a lot if it and it's great!"

Meridith Deliso, Call it the New Sharecropping, The Brooklyn Paper, http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/33/39/24_urbansharecropping_2010_09_17_bk.html

Salvatore Bklyn, http://www.salvatorebklyn.com/