10/12/2023
(1/2)
Duck Season is closing
Hi, This is Josh, the head cook and owner of Duck Season. It is with a truly heavy heart that I announce the end of Duck Season.
The difficult decision has been made to immediately close our brick-and-mortar location on Mercer Street in Manhattan and close the business entirely after Smorgasburg ends on October 29.
We opened on Mercer Street as a three-month trial with the intention of taking over the lease if we did well enough. We didn’t, and other business factors working against us forced the decision to cease operations.
The food business is a tough one—not for the faint of heart. Running any business in New York City is far more complicated (and costly) than it needs to be. These have always been facts, but the fallout from Covid-19, including shortages, price shocks and inflation in our sector has been unrelenting. Many businesses, including ours, haven’t really regained their footing since the pandemic.
Add to this all of the logistical complexities, costs and time it takes to get our food, equipment and people in front of customers, and it’s easy to see how hard it is to make ends meet.
Plus, unfortunate things happen. A new management team at the building from which we rent a commissary kitchen instituted a new fee structure at the beginning of the year that pushed up our costs there by more than 50%. Our van died in May and its replacement was a huge unplanned expense. Most impactful, this season air quality, heavy rain and heat frequently impacted our ability to operate at all, and unlike in previous years, when we chose to brave the elements, sales were universally weak.
