From Zoom to Soap in Brooklyn!
Inside the borough's strangest store. Plus! Save the High Line Pigeon!!
Hello everyone,
Welcome to Issue #193 of CAFÉ ANNE!
Whoa there is so much news this week.
First, after announcing in last issue’s letter that I am launching a new recurring feature exploring national chains, I got a slew of requests. “You might find it interesting to try a Wingstop,” suggested reader David J. in Brooklyn. Two readers proposed Jollibee: “I’ve heard the dish to get is a spaghetti in a sweet sauce that resembles ketchup,” wrote reader Megan. Other suggested Sonic, Applebee’s and Kung Fu Tea. I will for sure try them all—maybe all in one day!
I was disappointed, however, that no one suggested any merch retailers or service providers. Am I the only one jonesing for a deep dive into Foot Locker or the UPS Store?
In other news, the wonderful 16-foot pigeon statue perching on the High Line, which I wrote about last winter, is slated to be replaced this year by a 27-foot Buddha. People, I am a card-carrying Buddhist and even I know we don’t want to lose that wonderful bird. Can’t we enjoy the pigeon and Buddha together? You can sign the Change.org petition to preserve the statue here.
Artsy readers, meanwhile, will be excited to learn that the NYC Department of Sanitation is looking for folks to transform its garbage trucks into roving works of art with an original design—and paying a $1500 stipend for each truck. The city supplies the paint. You can submit your proposal here. I will, of course, be proposing a CAFÉ ANNE-branded garbage truck with the coffee cup logo on the side and my face on the hood.
Finally, huge lunch-adventure shoutouts to our newest paid subscribers Ian H., Amy S., and Forrest. That’s enough $$$ for 15 orders of Jolly Spaghetti with sweet sauce, hot dogs, melted cheese and ground beef at the Queens Jollibee!
I am very excited for this week’s issue, of course. We’ve got a reader requested excursion to Bed-Stuy where I met the man behind one of the borough’s most mysterious stores. Please enjoy.
Regards!
Anne
RETAIL MYSTERY CORNER
From Zoom to Soap in Brooklyn!
I love getting requests from readers asking me to investigate a NYC mystery, and I recently got a dandy from Eric L. in Brooklyn:
“Anne, I walk past a bare bones Soap Store (305 Classon Ave) every day, and I have so many questions. I feel you’re the perfect gumshoe to uncover the mysteries! How can they make any money selling just soap? What’s with the giant TV and Scarface-esque soap pyramid? Why are they using USPS mailers as posters on their front door? Why does this address have so many weird tenants? The last one was a Zoom store. Yes, the video-conferencing software had a physical location here previously! Thanks and good luck!”
I was intrigued. Why would someone open a Zoom store? Or a store that only sold soap? Were they the same person?
Last Tuesday, I hopped the B38 bus to Bed-Stuy and found the business in a storefront just north of DeKalb Avenue. The Zoom store had indeed been replaced by a soap store. A temporary sign tacked over the entrance said:
SOAP STORE NYC
Premium Quality
Est. 2025
Home of the Authentic Aleppo Soap
Additional signs taped to the front window—scribbled on what looked to be paper towels—advertised “Made in Aleppo Syria Since 1336,” and “Try Aleppo Soap $2.00”.
A third message, penned on a USPS Priority Mail Express envelope and taped to the front door noted, “We are open,” along with “Free latte”.
But while the advertised hours were 1-8 pm and it was now 1:30, the door was locked, and there was no one inside.
Happily, when I called the store’s number, a man picked up right away: “Soap Store NYC!”
“I’m outside your store,” I said. “Are you open today?”
The man said he’d be there in 30 minutes. Could I return then?
“Yes!” I said.
“Maybe make it 45,” he cautioned.
I told him I had a blog and wanted write about the store. This seemed to make the man very happy. He said he was the owner and his name was Steven. “I’ll give you free soap!” he said.
I sat on a nearby stoop to wait. A few minutes later, a young man strolled by in a bright orange ski cap, said hello and stopped in front of the store.
“Are you Steven?” I asked.
The man said his name was Mike. He lived around the corner and was a friend of Steven’s. They met when Steven opened the Zoom store.
“Ah!” I said. “So Steven was the guy who ran the Zoom store, and he changed it to a soap store! That’s quite a pivot!”
“From Zoom to soap, that’s a crazy turn-around,” Mike agreed.
Mike told me he’s in AV production and had stopped into the Zoom store looking for work when it first opened 18 months ago. He’s a big fan of Steven.
“He’s awesome! He’s driven! He’s a person who has a lot of vision and does what it takes to carry it out,” said Mike. “And there’s a method to his madness. He never says, ‘I can’t do this.’ He always finds a way to make it happen.”
Mike said he’d return later and I resumed my wait. Another twenty minutes passed before a stocky fellow in a black parka came by and unlocked the door. He was listening to a live YouTube stream of the protests in Iran.
“Come on in!” he said. “Welcome to my store!”
I happily accepted his offer of a free latte and nosed around as he fussed with the espresso maker. The store was minimally furnished with a varnished concrete floor and track lighting. A long, rough-hewn table featured towers of rustic-looking soap.
Aleppo soap, it turns out, is made in Aleppo, a city in Syria. “Like the region of France is known for its champagne, it’s known for this amazing soap!” said Steven, who grew up in Iraq washing with the cleanser. “All over the world, except in America. And we want to change that now.”
I asked about the signs and tee-shirts along the back wall advertising “The Original Green Bodega.”
“Green Bodega, that don’t belong to us,” said Steven. “They pay us for the space. It’s a cannabis delivery service. I order my cannabis from it!”
And the signs scribbled on paper towels? “They’re regular sheets of paper,” said Steven. “But it rained on them.”
He handed me an oat-milk latte and told me a bit about his background. His family moved from Iraq to Michigan when he was twelve. Now 46, he lives in Greenpoint but still owns a liquor store and several buildings in Michigan. He also works in telecom sales, as a Zoom broker. “We sell Zoom services like Zoom phone, Zoom contact center,” he said. “We just did a law firm, a cannabis company, and we’re doing an auto parts store.”
He initially rented the storefront to serve as an office for his Zoom business. But last summer, when the U.S. lifted its long-standing economic sanctions on Syria, he spotted an opportunity. For years, it was effectively impossible to bring Syrian goods to the states. Now, he could import his favorite soap.
“I found the best soap maker, which is the Jebeili Family,” he said of the single brand he carries in his store. “Just through my connections and the people I know in the Middle East.”
He had several thousand bars delivered on a cargo plane to JFK, and Soap Store NYC opened in November. It’s currently open by appointment only because he’s still hiring a staff.
While it’s hard to imagine someone making an appointment to buy a bar of soap, Steven sees big things happening. He’s ordered an entire shipping container of soap that will be delivered by boat this spring, and his shop will soon be packed to the rafters. “50,000 pieces, and all of it’s going to sell!” he said. “We’re super excited bringing the Aleppo soap to Brooklyn, to New York, and hopefully all over the country!”
So what’s the deal with Aleppo soap? It’s made from olive oil and laurel oil extracted from laurel berries, which grow on laurel trees, Steven said. Prices vary depending on laurel oil content.
The most popular bar, with 20% laurel oil, costs $8. “All my Wall Street friends, they buy this,” Steven said of the most expensive bar, which is 60% laurel oil. “They can spend $16 for the bar soap, but they said it’s the best bar soap they ever used. And one of my Wall Street friends says, ‘I want to invest money with you to make this brand a household brand in America.’”
“Oh!” I said. “You’ve got backing! What kind of Wall Street guy is he?”
“I’m not exactly sure,” said Steven. “He takes boxing lessons with my boxer trainer. That’s why we became friends. But I never asked him what he does on Wall Street.”
Laurel oil, he continued, fixes everything. “It’s known for antibacterial, anti-fungal, anti-inflammatory, super good for sensitive skin, super good as a face wash, super good as a body wash, super good as a hair-face-and-body-in-one-bar soap,” he said. “And maybe you believe this or not, but the more you use Aleppo soap with the laurel oil, it really fights against the flu. You don’t get sick as much.”
He had me smell a bar, which didn’t smell like much. Then he opened a bottle of supermarket hand soap and squeezed, aiming it at my face.
“You smell this soap, you smell toxicity!” he said.
“You squirted it into my nose!” I said.
“Sorry! But smell that! It’s horrible!”
Next, he had me test drive a liquid version of the Aleppo soap in his bathroom: “Wash your hands with the soap. Wash your hands. Like, put that on your hands. Put a little bit more! It’s okay, put more!”
I lathered and rinsed.
“You see, when you done, your hands gonna feel very nice, and they’re gonna feel very like they’re moisturized already,” he said.
“They do,” I said. “They feel like they’re covered in olive oil.”
I looked around for paper towels and Steven suggested I dry off with toilet paper. “I’m sorry, you caught me on a bad day,” he said. “By the way, you could do this on Zoom!”
“I don’t like Zoom, actually,” I said.
“Okay, we can’t be friends.”
I was delighted when Steven proposed telephoning one of his customers to get an impromptu testimonial.
He dialed a number on his phone, and I eavesdropped on the following conversation with a customer whom I will identify as K:
Steven: “K, how are you? How much do you love the soap?”
K [Sounding as if this call was totally normal]: “It’s the best soap in the world, I told you!”
Steven: “What does your wife say about the soap?”
K: “She loves it too. My father loves it. All my clients love it! They love the soap.”
Steven: “What did the Wall Street clients buy? Which soap?”
K: “Aleppo soap.”
Steven: “Hahahaha!”
K: “Best soap in the world, baby!”
Steven is not worried about selling the 50,000-bar shipment. He’s got a marketing strategy, starting with the 40 restaurants in Brooklyn and Manhattan using his liquid soap in their bathrooms. He’ll soon be posting videos on YouTube and Instagram.
“I’m 100% believer we’re gonna go viral with the soap. Because the soap is amazing. If people see it, then they know about it, for sure they’re gonna order,” he said.
But this isn’t just about soap, he added. It’s about bridging two regions of the world with something positive. People need to connect over something—why not soap?
“It’s to bring out the people of the Middle East and the people of America, to really get to know each other, to really get along, to respect one another and have good ties with each other,” he said. “And Jewish people too!”
He was explaining the political situation in Syria when Mike returned to the store.
“How much do you love the soap?” Steven greeted him.
“It’s awesome!” said Mike.
Mike turned to me: “How’s it going?”
“Really good,” I said. “I learned a lot. I washed my hands.”
Before I left, Steven offered me some free samples. “Honestly, you’re not going to use another soap again,” he said.
I declined, explaining I didn’t want my reporting biased by free soap. But I did buy a couple bars which I took home and tried in the shower the next morning. It had pleasant natural scent, a good lather and didn’t leave me feeling dried out.
Did it change my feelings about the Middle East? No, I still feel very confused about the Middle East. But perhaps this will require repeated applications. Steven made me promise to use the soap for five days and report back—I’ll report to you as well!
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”
—Mike Tyson
CAFÉ ANNE, a free weekly newsletter about NYC, is created by Brooklyn journalist Anne Kadet. Subscribe to get the latest issue every Monday.
lol still confused by the Middle East 😂
Love this whole post! And I just bought some soap! ❤️