Brooklyn's Artisanal Mayo Shop Is So Popular It Needs a Bigger Space

Photo via Empire Mayonnaise Co./Facebook

PROSPECT HEIGHTS, BROOKLYN — Empire Mayonnaise Co., Brooklyn's only artisanal mayo shop — and, as far as we can tell, the world's — will be deserting its darling white storefront on Vanderbilt Avenue this July, co-owner Elizabeth Valleau told DNAinfo Thursday.

The NYC aggregation army has been quick to call the store's closure a sign of the times — a canary in the coal mine for the U.S. economy, even.

Indeed, if an artisanal mayo shop can't survive in Prospect Heights, it's hard to imagine one surviving anywhere.

But according to Valleau, the company is not, in fact, shutting down its Prospect Heights location because business is bad.

Quite the opposite. "We’ve had a great time there, but we’re all on top of each other now," she told DNAinfo. "We can’t possibly make enough mayonnaise in that space, so off we go" to a larger facility, perhaps in next-door Crown Heights or up in Long Island City, Queens.

In the meantime, the company's $7 to $8 pots of "homestyle mayonnaise," jazzed up with essence of truffle and ginger and bacon and (of course) hot Sriracha sauce, will still reportedly fill the shelves of various shops around Brooklyn — including huge gourmet-grocery chains like Dean & Deluca and Whole Foods.

They're also available to order online.

So if Empire Mayonnaise Co. is in fact so indicative of neighborhood change that it has become "shorthand for gratuitous gentrification," as Good Magazine once wrote, then perhaps we're in deeper than we thought.

Prospect Heights has been gentrified beyond repair. A newer, bigger artisanal mayonnaise shop in not-so-long-ago working-class Crown Heights or Long Island City? Now that would be a sign of the times.

We've reached out to Valleau for more on her plans for expansion.

While we wait, an SNL oldie inspired by Empire's storied location on Vanderbilt, may it rest in paradise: