BREAKING! Poppy's is coming to Brooklyn Heights!
Jamie Erickson is taking over Cranberry's on Henry Street
Brooklyn Heights is slowly becoming a neighborhood you might actually like to eat in. The former culinary desert has been experiencing something of a renaissance with Apt. 4F, Inga’s. Now comes the fantastic news that Poppy’s, Jamie Erickson’s beloved Cobble Hill all-day cafe and market, will be adding another location in the former Cranberry’s space on Henry Street. She plans an October opening.
Poppy’s is a neighborhood gem, a gathering place for community and local food, adored for mornings of overstuffed egg and cheese biscuit sandwiches, lemon poppyseed loaf, and rhubarb crumble bars, midday meals of market salads, labneh, marinated chickpeas, and dill-forward egg salad, and dinner time faves like mac and cheese and farm-raised rotisserie chicken.
Poppy’s, which opened at the end of 2012, is named for Jamie’s grandfather, Leo Ratnofsky, whom she called Poppy. Growing up on the Lower East Side with her family, Jamie often spent time with Poppy, who worked the counter at B&H Dairy on the Lower East Side for 40 years. “Poppy was only alive until I was 10 years old, but in that short time instilled the absolute love of food as everyday joy and culture, and the idea that New York is a community,” she told me.
Poppy’s, which just celebrated 10 years on Degraw Street, began as a catering business for the fashion industry and grew organically to include a little retail cafe used primarily to drive its events business. But during the pandemic, Jamie quickly shifted her business model to serve a neighborhood in need of daily nourishment. She expanded her small menu to include prepared foods for all three meal periods, began opening 6 days a week, and increased her seating with an enclosed outdoor structure.
“The pandemic changed my entire business and my entire outlook on business,” she said. “What fed my soul was that neighborhood component. With everyone home it was just so incredible to see how much the community showed up for us.”
Now Jamie is moving solidly into community-based cafes, continuing with drop-off catering and on-site events at their intimate event space, HQ, on the Columbia Street waterfront. “I am leaning into my community and giving back to what they have given us.”
Jamie had been looking for a space in Brooklyn Heights for a while, but the rents were too prohibitive. Then she saw a photo of the outside of Cranberry’s, which had closed in 2020 after 42 years in the neighborhood. There was a “For Lease” sign in the window. She emailed the owner, Jim Montemarano, who wrote back and said that he had come to Poppy’s a year before to find her and see if she would take over his business. He left a note asking if she might like to take over the lease and keep the neighborhood mom and pop feel. “He was looking for someone he knew that served the community and wanted to continue that connection to the people in the neighborhood,” Jamie told me. But she never got the note.
The missed connection between two business owners came to a happy and quick resolution a few weeks ago when Jamie signed the lease on Cranberry’s. She’s now working to renovate (with landmarks approval) and hopes to open in October.
For the Poppys at Cranberry’s location in Brooklyn Heights, she is planning a similar menu to the Degraw Street cafe, with a wide selection of breakfast and lunch options, but with more prepared foods in the grab-and-go case.
“I want to offer what Brooklyn Heights doesn’t really have so I am imagining a full case of beautiful salads, prepared foods, hot rotisserie chickens and sides and pick up your dinner and then a pantry and market for seasonal goods and more.
But every move forward comes with a continued commitment to community, she says. “This is a main word for driving my business,” Jamie told me. “It’s what fills my cup.”