Smorgasburg Williamsburg Is Reopening With a Takeout-Only Model

Smorgasburg — NYC’s longstanding outdoor food market that used to attract tens of thousands of visitors on a typical weekend — is reopening with a takeout-only model, dubbed Smorg To Go. The new operation, opening on Monday, July 20, will be located directly across the street from the market’s flagship Williamsburg location, at 51 North 6th Street, at Kent Avenue.

At this new version of Smorgasburg, customers order from vendors online via the market’s new website, going live next week, and pick up their food from one centralized spot on the lot. There is no on-site outdoor dining available to prevent potential crowding, Smorgasburg co-founder Eric Demby says, but the lot is a block away from the waterfront Marsha P. Johnson State Park.

The takeout-only model also insulates Smorgasburg from any potential city shutdowns that might occur if COVID-19 cases shoot up again. “Smorgasburg is a gigantic engine,” Demby says. “We don’t want to turn this thing on and off. We just want to go.”

Instead of the market’s typical spread of a hundred or so vendors operating outdoors one day a week, Smorg To Go will be open seven days per week with a smaller list of 10 vendors that will rotate out weekly. The switch, Demby says, made sense on multiple fronts: For pickup, customers will likely be looking for on-demand food that they can get immediately, versus waiting til the weekend, and the constantly rotating menu keeps diners coming back. Plus, it was easier for the market and vendors to staff up for an operation that would be open seven days per week, versus one.

For the opening week, vendors include a mix of old favorites like Jamaican food purveyor Excell Kingston Eatery and Brooklyn bakery the Good Batch, plus some new additions including Korean barbecue pork stand #Gogi, and Mai Bpen Ra, which specializes in Thai papaya salads.

Demby is hoping to replicate the concept across multiple sites in the city as interest builds and have the vendors rotate around to different locations. Smorgasburg vendors will also be participating in a new partnership with Rethink — the NYC-based non-profit that addresses food insecurity in the U.S. and counts fine dining destination Eleven Madison Park among its partners — to generate meals for the organization as well.

Smorg To Go will be open from Monday through Sunday for pickup, from 11:30 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. The full vendor list for the first two weeks is below:

Week One:

#Gogi (Geo Si Gi)
Berg’s Pastrami
Burger Supreme
Excell Kingston Eatery
The Good Batch
Lobsterdamus
Mai Bpen Rai
Mao’s Bao
Vaquero Elotes
The Whole Bowl

Week Two:

Bon Chovie
C Bao
Duck Season
Groundlings Pizza
Monk’s Food
Petisco Brazuca
Ring Ding Bar
Rooster Boy
Vayalo! Cocina
Yakitori Tatsu