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Duane Park Patisserie is back open
Duane Park Patisserie, which is back open now after being closed by the Department of Health for not having a permit, is back open with a new permit. But I think it is worth repeating the saga here, with details, since it is a window into the kind of efforts small businesses have to make to keep going in this city, even after decades of experience. Is it a cautionary tale? Or maybe the story just helps us understand what kind of grit it takes to have shops like ours in the neighborhood.
Keep in mind that for three days, owner Madeline Lanciani had no profits while still paying staff and incurring the cost of food waste. It’s no small thing.
So: Duane Park Patisserie has been permitted by the state Department of Agriculture for 33 years because it is a majority wholesale business with retail as an accessory.
The state permits are good for two years and the renewals come automatically.
When the renewal was late to arrive in mid-August, Madeline first thought she had to email to see what was going on, but then the Department of Health said that the state referred her business to them because she had tables. She reached out to the state Department of Agriculture, who said the tables were not an issue; they had told her that if her revenue from retail was more than 51 percent of her business — which it is not — she would have to switch to city DOH. So Madeline did not apply to DOH and instead waited for her permit from the state.
But the state still did not renew the permit, so DOH came in and shut the business down.
“I am amazed that anyone would want to open a small food business anywhere in NYC,” Madeline said. “It’s very frustrating.”
For its part, this is what the Department of Health said about the issue:
“The Duane Park Patisserie was licensed under the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets until 8/14/2025, when that permit expired. The NYC Health Department issued a violation for no permit on 9/8/2025 and closed the establishment on 10/20/25 for operating without a permit. They have since applied for a Health permit and must pass an inspection before they can reopen.”
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Add to this the proposal of Mamdani that the minimum wage be increased to $30 per hour by 2030, and it’s going to be the end of small business in New York City. Very troubling.
Elizabeth
Mamdani’s platform includes a detailed policy proposal on how to help small businesses in NYC.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wuZ-s8VnnAHqHhqtHESwgzINiN7D95vy/view
$30 sounds like a lot, but everyone deserves a living wage.
Thanks for sharing this. I applaud these efforts to reduce the fees and bureaucracy impeding small businesses. However, I still believe that a $30 minimum wage is going to kill restaurants and shops throughout the city, which are already suffering under inflationary pressure. That is almost double what it is today. Imagine how much that frozen dessert is going to cost when it’s prepared by someone making so much money?
A $30 per hour minimum wage is likely going to accelerate automation and labor force reductions in the service industries. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Remember, the true minimum wage is zero — if the business closes or lays off workers because it can’t sustain the increased labor costs, then those workers don’t earn anything. Around the time the NYC minimum wage increased to $15, Whole Foods stopped having express cashiers on a regular basis and instead vastly expanded the number of self-service registers. If workers can’t produce $30/hr+ in revenues to the business, then that wage is unsustainable. Such a high minimum wage hits hardest on entry level workers, students who need part-time employment and otherwise unskilled workers and opens up incentives to hire under the table and thus leads to more worker exploitation.
https://www.nber.org/papers/w34033
National Bureau of Economic Research estimates that moving California’s minimum wage for fast food chain stores to $20 reduced jobs in the industry by 2.7%-3.2% or around 18,000 jobs.
Hi Pam
thanks for the succinct explanation.
somewhere recently, i commented that small biz owners wear all the hats .Small Biz owners don’t have the layers of med/lg corps and chains. sometimes when you are juggling all those hats one falls down – in my case i should have been more om top of NYS when my permit renewal didn’t arrive in august.- and then there is the issue of the revenue numbers: Neither department( NYS or NYC) had any protocol for confirming the revenue!
Anyway- I am back open, and grateful to be open and grateful for all the neighborhood support.
not commenting here on the $30 minimum wage proposal- that’s another issue!
We love you Madeline…forza!!
How can the Dept of Health shut down the patisserie if it was the Dept of Ag who had jurisdiction? Kudos to Madeline and her business for dealing with this insanity!