High taxes could call time on Manhattan’s British tea shop
in New York
AFTER three decades serving crumpets and spotted dick to homesick expats and Anglophile Americans, New York’s most famous British tea shop is taking desperate measures to stay afloat in the face of Manhattan’s crippling taxes and giddy rents.
Nicky Perry, the owner of Tea & Sympathy, this week launched a crowdfunding appeal to raise money to pay off debts and avoid going the way of so many other small businesses.
“Real estate taxes that small businesses pay, even though they don’t even own their buildings, are absolutely ridiculous,” she said over a cup of tea – Typhoo – and a plate of scones. “Every year it goes up and up and up.”
Loyal customers have donated more than $17,000 (£13,000) in two days via the GoFundMe website to keep the beloved shop afloat and help pay off some of the $70,000 owed in back taxes.
Messages of support have poured in, including from the actress Sarah Jessica Parker, who helped out after a rent hike in 2014.
Sales in Mrs Perry’s small empire – which now include a grocery store stocked with Vimto, Colman’s mustard and HP Sauce; and a fish and chip shop named A Salt and Battery – are good. She has expanded to use online delivery services. And she said she had already cut costs as far as she could.
Famous customers have included visiting Brits such as Stephen Fry and Judy Dench, as well as anyone else looking for a good plate of English food and generous helpings of Mrs Perry’s risqué jokes. But none of that goodwill is enough to keep up with the $28,000 needed each month to pay rent and taxes for the three shops.
She has promised to fight on through it all. “I’m doing it. I’m British. I have the Dunkirk spirit in me,” she said. di Giulietta to neighbouring properties along the Via Capello.
Davide Albertini, who owns a fashion shop, told The Sunday Telegraph: “A lot of tourists are badly behaved and think they have the right to scrawl graffiti all over the place. When I catch them and tell them to stop, they get angry with me.
“We spent a large amount of money last December to clean up the graffiti but a year on, it’s worse than ever.”
Mr Albertini and other business owners have written to Verona city council asking for more surveillance.
It is not just graffiti that has become a problem. A bronze statue of Juliet had to be removed from the palazzo courtyard because so many tourists had taken to rubbing its right breast in the hope it might bring them good luck.