Cash Mobs Bolster East Harlem Businesses

In East Harlem, Metro Hope Church strives to support small businesses by mobbing them with cash.

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By Christina Kelso

As congregants from Metro Hope Church packed into her family’s intimate East Harlem restaurant Sunday afternoon, Yohanis Paulino was rarely seen with empty hands. Paulino, 59, weaved through the Bitter Orange Café on Park Avenue with energetic efficiency, cooking and carrying plates of Dominican food to hungry patrons filling nearly every seat.

“I’m happy to know that people are finding out about our business,” she said in Spanish through an interpreter. “I’m happy when people taste our food and love it.”

The packed house reflected Metro Hope’s lastest cash mob initiative. For about three years, the church has dispatched residents to a particular small business at a specific date and time, each committed to spending $10 to $15 in cash. The events have targeted more than a dozen local business and have expanded through partnerships with the East Harlem Community Alliance and Union Settlement.

For Bitter Orange Café, which Paulino runs alongside her husband Francisco Paulino, 69, and two of their daughters, the day provided welcome support. Shortly after opening last September, they were forced to close for repairs from December until May after a car crashed into the side of their building.

Yohanis Paulino, co-owner of Bitter Orange Cafe, talks with Metro Hope Church Pastor Jose Humphreys during a cash mob at the East Harlem restaurant Sunday.

This was their second cash mob since reopening. For the first mob, the church assembled about 15 people. This time, it doubled its numbers, drawing about 30.

“A lot of people thought that we closed for good,” said Ysaira Paulino, 33. “But because of the cash mobs, it’s busy. That’s the best kind of advertising, word of mouth.”

Metro Hope Pastor Jose Humphreys, 45, sees small business support as “a call to justice in a gentrifying neighborhood.

“It’s acts of resistance to a larger narrative that gentrification is telling, that bigger might be better. That cool, sexy, affluent, hipster, might be the only way that neighborhoods can trend,” he said.

Using cash over cards reflects that mission.  Research suggests when customers spend cash at local businesses, the money circulates through the neighborhood longer, Humphreys said.

“With cash, you really see the ecology of the neighborhood at work,” he said.

The church began the program during the winter of 2015-2016 when Michelle Cruz, 45, then owner of East Harlem Café, was struggling to pay her employees. A parishioner at Metro Hope, she reached out to her congregation for help. She had heard about cash mobs in Buffalo (they’ve also been used in nearby Washington Heights) and thought the idea might work well in East Harlem.

Braving biting winter weather, the congregation responded in force. Church members volunteered as food servers and musicians and thronged the cafe bringing handfuls of cash.

“I was so emotionally overwhelmed,” Cruz said. “And there was a snowstorm that day. It was amazing.”

Cash flow from the event enabled her to make her payroll.

She’s since closed her café, but now helps keep the cash mobs rolling as program manager of Buy Local East Harlem, an East Harlem Community Alliance initiative funded by a grant from the city’s Small Business Services division.

“I want to see the businesses that have been here for a while, that are gems of the community and the backbone of the community, stay here,” Cruz said. “And not just barely making it. I want them to flourish.”

Some businesses reported more than doubling their average daily revenue during cash mobs, Cruz said.

Jo-Ann Barett, 45, who owns Aromas Boutique Bakery with her sister, attended several neighborhood cash mobs before they had one of their own in March.

A catering business without a storefront, they were hosted by another local business, Urban Garden Center. On a day when they would normally not do much business, the cash mob “launched the week on a really positive note,” not only bringing revenue but offering a way to network with other businesses.

“It was a really special opportunity,” Barett said.

Both Cruz and Barett grew up in East Harlem before becoming a part of its business community and expressed hopes for a vibrant neighborhood future.

“East Harlem has many things that it’s known for in the past,” Cruz said. “But there are much more beautiful things it should be known for, like the culture and the flavor and the family-oriented way we do life together.”

(Photos by Christina Kelso)

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