Playground Coffee Shop asked its Bed-Stuy neighbors for help. They showed up

Rocked by the Omicron variant, Playground asked its supporters for $30,000 to stay afloat. They raised nearly double that in three days

By Brooklyn Magazine Staff

The Omicron variant of the coronavirus is hitting everyone in the city in big ways and small. One of them, Bed-Stuy staple Playground Coffee Shop, put out a plea online that it was in “a fight to stay alive” earlier this week. Its customers are responding with an outpouring of support.

The fundraising began Tuesday, when the popular coffee shop and community space shared on its Instagram page the “regrettable news” that it needed $30,000 in order to keep operating. (Notably, the coffee shop shared its hardship only after first soliciting help for the victims of last weekend’s horrific Bronx fire, the city’s deadliest in three decades.) The shop said its financial difficulties were the result of “difficult surprise” of the new variant, which upended its plans to fully reopen.

As of this writing, Playground has raised just shy of $50,000 from 1,200 donations, nearly doubling its initial goal. Brooklyn Magazine has reached out for a comment, but has not yet received a reply.

“We could not put the people we intend to serve at risk of illness and possibly death,” the shop explained to its 17,000 followers earlier this week. So, it started a crowd-sourced fundraiser on GoFundMe asking for $30,000 to help cover staff and food costs as well as rent.

“This reality leaves us at a stalemate for the long winter ahead. To-go coffee, merchandise, and limited bookstore hours are not capable of generating enough income to keep us open,” it said.

Customers flooded the campaign with help, filling its GoFundMe page and Instagram account. One donor called the space a “beacon of light.”

Playground was established in 2016 by Zenat Begum whose family operated a hardware store in the space for two decades. She turned it into a multifunctional space that serves coffee, but more importantly to the neighborhood, installed a community fridge, a library shelf, and space that hosted classes for the community.

Playground, she has said, is “a continuation of what my parents had given me via their hardware store,” and a space that’s built around “survival” and “safety.”