A city program designed to help small business owners navigate the bureaucratic hurdles of setting up shop in Gotham has helped more than 2,200 small businesses across the city avoid about $22 million in fines and violations since Mayor Eric Adams took office, amNewYork has Subway experienced.
City Department of Small Business Services (SBS) program, dubbed NYC Business Express Service Team (BEST), makes a group of about a dozen experts available for free to small businesses in the city. This group provides one-on-one guidance on how to navigate municipal regulations, save money and move faster through the city’s permitting and licensing processes, according to the mayor’s office.
While NYC Best officially launched last fall, SBS has been providing businesses with this assistance since January 2022.
Mayor and SBS Commissioner Kevin Kim is set to announce the goals as an example of NYC Best’s successes at Leidylicious Cake — a new cupcake bakery opening in Forest Hills, Queens, served by the program — to kick off “Small Business Month” Thursday morning.
“Working New Yorkers deserve their fair share, and we’re taking the burden off hard-working New Yorkers so they can get their businesses up and running while putting money back in their pockets,” Adams said in a statement to amNewYork Metro. “We’re adding the right ingredients to grow small businesses in New York City. This Small Business Month, I encourage every New Yorker to get out and support your local shops and, most importantly, spend!”
Kim said the program acts as a kind of “concierge service” to show small business owners the best ways to “cut through” the bureaucracy and red tape often imposed by the city.
“We’re helping small businesses really learn about what violations they could get if they just continued to operate the way they’re doing,” Kim said in an interview. “We have professional compliance advisors who are former inspectors from various regulatory agencies who will go out, meet the small business owner where they are at their place of business and do walkthroughs to educate them on how to avoid various fines.”
There is also another SBS team in the program, Kim said, called “Small Business Advocates.” This group is dedicated to helping small businesses navigate the processes of other city agencies, such as helping them speed through permitting and licensing procedures or getting an agreement for an inspection.
“We can help make sure that as a city we don’t stand in the way of being able to do what you do best, which is run your own business,” Kim said.
Kim said NYC Best helped Leidy Cardona — the owner of Leidylicious Cake — who is an immigrant from Colombia, expedite inspections for the necessary city permits and licenses for her business in half the time. The program team helped Cardona with every step of the process, he said.
“Ever since she was nine years old in Colombia, she used to play with a kitchen set and pretend to bake,” Kim said. “And now, years later, here she is, having emigrated to the United States and opened her first bakery… It was just such an emotional story to hear her tell about how NYC Best really helped her get opened a lot faster.”
Small businesses have helped lead the city’s recovery from the economic devastation caused by COVID-19, Kim said — the city has now regained 99.7% of pre-pandemic private sector jobs, according to the New York State Department of Labor (NYSDOL) . According to Kim, over a million New Yorkers are employed by small businesses, which make up 94% of all private businesses in the Big Apple.
Plus, Kim said, 25,000 new small businesses have opened across the city since the pandemic began, making up one-in-one businesses formed over the past year.
“One of the things the mayor often says is that New York City’s economy isn’t coming back, but it’s back,” he said.
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