BROOKLYN'S FLOURISHING 'FOOD CHAIN' - ONE IN SIX BOROUGH BUSINESSES ARE FOOD-RELATED
The Brooklyn "Food Chain" - starting with the food manufacturing and wholesale distribution, and including grocery stores, specialty stores, restaurants, and coffee shops - accounts for 12.5% of the borough's 472,000 private sector jobs, according to the Winter 2012 Brooklyn Labor Market Review.
Food accounts for one out of six of the 49,000 businesses in Brooklyn - with nearly 59,000 people employed by 7,800 businesses. In 2011, Brooklyn's food manufacturing sector had an estimated annual total output of $2.2 billion.
If you consider the borough's food manufacturing as a single sector, its 2011 job numbers were surpassed only by health care (108,000). The "Food Chain" tops the 51,000 jobs in social assistance and the 44,000 jobs in non-food retail stores. Total wages in the Brooklyn food chain sector came to $1.46 billion in 2011.
Here are the report's other findings:
-- About half (2,800) of the borough's food manufacturing employment is in bakeries. This category includes retail bakeries that bake their own goods on site since baking is considered a manufacturing process.
-- Brooklyn bakeries average about 11 employees per business with an average wage of $24,200. All other Brooklyn food manufacturers have an average of 25 workers with those workers making an average of $45,300 per year.
-- There are 377 Brooklyn food manufacturing businesses who do not report any employees - about a third more than a decade ago. These include new start-up operations and one-person specialty food businesses.
-- Food wholesaling has flourished in recent years - adding nearly 1,000 workers over the past five years. That has been led by an increase of 800 workers in beer, wine, and distilling beverage wholesaling.
"Brooklyn is home to all kinds of food and beverage makers - from large companies, to 'mom and pop' shops, to one-person operations - and this particular sector will only grow as the borough attracts more and more entrepreneurs," said Carlo A. Scissura, President & CEO of the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce. "These figures show once again that Brooklyn is fast becoming the center of the food and beverage manufacturing universe that is creating new jobs in the process. If people keep eating, Brooklyn will continue serving it up!"
"Food manufacturing is a big business in Brooklyn comprised mainly of small firms purchasing over a half-billion dollars in goods and services from Brooklyn-based suppliers and generating $463 million in value-added," noted James Parrott, Deputy Director and Chief Economist of the Fiscal Policy Institute.
Parrott's organization prepares the quarterly Brooklyn Labor Market Review for the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce.
Parrott also stated that nearly a quarter of the output of Brooklyn food and beverage manufacturers is sold outside of the borough, with an estimated $134 million exported outside of the United States.
To view the report in full visit: http://fiscalpolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/BrooklynLaborMarketReview_FPI_Winter2012.pdf