When an allegedly crooked restaurant manager throws his staff lemons, someone has to pick them up and make some lemonade.
The alleged crook is Busy Chef manager and co-owner Dan Kaufman, whose apparent credit card fraud scheme led to his arrest last month and the closure of Busy Chef, plus its two adjoining eateries, Oven and the Blue Pig ice cream shop, and the nearby Wine Bar at 50 Henry Street.
While Kaufman awaits trial, his four dozen or so employees are looking for work in a bad economy.
The man trying to make something good out of the distasteful situation is Homer Fink, writer of the Brooklyn Heights Blog, which has been covering the Busy Chef debacle.
This week, Fink offered to post the resumes of former Kaufman employees in hopes that “someone out there in blogland” will hire the hard-working, but dismissed, employees.
“I walked by the four shuttered establishments on Henry Street and I was awestruck by the sight,” said Fink, whose real name is John Loscalzo. “Being out of work sucks, so I just couldn’t sit on the sidelines. I thought, ‘Let’s see if we can do something.’
“We’re reaching out to the [blog] community and saying, ‘If you’re hiring, please consider these people.’ You have to think that many people who live in Brooklyn Heights are in a position to help.”
Fink is asking fired workers to send their resumes to webmaster@brooklynheightsblog.com.
