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Much of the cafe space will feel familiar to past MeMe’s regulars - the curving bar is still in place, as are the comfy brown banquettes - but Willis’s brother, T.V. The establishment isn’t divided into separate selling areas - “It’s not a food hall,” Willis says - but rather remains one cohesive spot where each of the owners split rent, sell each other’s food and drinks, and otherwise contribute equally to keep the cafe running. KIT’s daily cafe staples of coffee and pastries, made by Willis, act as the sturdy, consistent backbone for the space. Jack Schramm, who previously worked as a bartender at well-regarded NYC cocktail spots Existing Conditions and Booker and Dax, partnered with the former director of culinary operations at Milk Bar, Jena Derman, to sell eye-catching jelly cakes that are “the fun exclamation point in it at all,” Willis says. Katie Zanin and Rocky Owen of Black Cat keep the shelves stocked with a collection of in-demand $20 to $30 natural and sustainable wines. For those missing MeMe’s beloved gay brunches, Jessica and Trina Quinn of Dacha 46 are now throwing Banya brunches on Saturdays and Sundays with piles of pelmeni, breakfast flatbreads, and sweets like medovik, a multi-layer honey cake. The varying businesses have linked together to create a unique dining experience at KIT.
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To do that, Willis brought onboard at KIT several of the small businesses that she had begun working with after the diner closed down: Eastern European spot Dacha 46, wine bar Black Cat, and artistic jelly cake company Solid Wiggles. I wanted to try to create something that felt sustainable for small businesses.”Ĭlockwise from top left: KIT’s carrot zucchini bread and lemon poppy blueberry muffins Dacha 46’s buckwheat biscuits Solid Wiggles’s jelly cakesīacked by the experience of successfully running MeMe’s for several years, Willis wanted to not only open another welcoming, queer dining space in the city, but also help other queer owner-operators establish their own footholds in the industry, too. “To me, opening another restaurant that was just my own felt like status quo. “This is not a pivot, but it is a direct response to the fragility of the restaurant industry,” Willis says. In mid-June, the former MeMe’s Diner space at 657 Washington Avenue, near Saint Marks Avenue, officially reopened as KIT (an acronym for “Keep In Touch”), a neighborhood cafe and a business incubator that represents Willis’s blueprint for carving out more space in the industry for queer people and people of color - both as diners, and food business owners. That effort foreshadowed Willis’ latest venture. But instead of turning away from the industry after closing MeMe’s doors, Willis connected with other queer-owned businesses that had launched during the pandemic and started hosting pop-ups out of MeMe’s vacant space. For Libby Willis, the former co-owner of beloved Prospect Heights spot MeMe’s Diner, the pandemic brought into sharper focus what she already knew firsthand from three years of running the diner: The economics of the restaurant industry are unsustainable, especially for small owner-operators, and even more so for rare queer-owned spaces.