Restaurateur Stratis Morfogen talks business in his new book Be a Disruptor; but there’s no analytics or theory, his experiences from gangsters to Covid are what taught him the most valuable lessons of the trade.
Aside from writing a tell-all book, Morfogen is known as a business owner, entrepreneur, and New York City locale, with a keen sense of street-smarts developed through the impressive list of establishments he’s founded, partners he’s collaborated with, and problems he’s dealt with. At just 20 years old, Morfogen opened the Gotham City Diner on the Upper East Side after leaving his father’s restaurant.
In the early 90s, the business attracted the attention of the Gambino crime family – reputable for being one of the original trailblazers of organized crime at the turn of the century. “John Gotti Jr. tried to shake me down, he beat up my managers for about three weeks, I told him to go f-k himself,” Morfogen said.
After Ralph Coppola and Barney Bellomo —leaders of the competing Genovese crime family and frequenters at the Gotham City Diner— saw Morfogen cleaning up the constant acts of vandalism that the Gambino’s inflicted, they intervened. The Genovese’s approached the Gambino’s with a ‘you mess with him, you mess with us’ attitude, defending Morfogen and his business. They took him in as one of their own, supporting his diner and standing up against the bullying and alcohol tax that the Gambino’s tried to force onto him. “I was afraid I had just traded one devil for another, but they [the Genovese’s] stood up for me for 15 years,” Morfogen added.
After the Gotham City Diner, Morfogen went on to open various establishments including a club, Rouge, the Brooklyn Chop House, and the Brooklyn Dumpling Shop. He was always told that he needed to write a book on his ventures and dedicated nearly five chapters in Be a Disruptor to his experiences with organized crime. He wanted to offer entrepreneurs practical anecdotes that would be entertaining and informative on how to achieve success through determination and overcoming obstacles. “The bottom line is to never allow anyone to get in the way of what you’re focused on,” Morfogen said. “Every time there’s a setback, there’s an opportunity.”
Seeking possibilities during hard times is a central theme in his book and his life, as Morfogen also touches upon making the best out of another tough era, the pandemic. When the world shut down in March 2020 and his competitors were laying low and trying to survive, Morfogen took a less conservative approach and doubled down on investing while uncertainty flooded the industry. “I took up the biggest, most prime properties for pennies on the dollar,” Morfogen said. Those transactions have been paying off for him, as his newest restaurant, the Brooklyn Dumpling Shop which opened in Spring of 2021 offers a fresh perspective to New York City dining.
The Brooklyn Dumpling Shop is the first automat dumpling shop – with a 24-hour, contact free system, delivering fresh Americanized dumplings in a vending-machine fashion. When 20-ounce sandwiches were taking over New York, Morfogen had the idea for the two-ounce sandwich, putting any classic diner staple inside of a dumpling. From lamb gyro to bacon cheeseburger, or caramel apple dumplings, the dynamic menu paved the way for a brand-new market. Capturing both the sandwich and dumpling audiences, the innovation of merging these two cultures has been a success as more dumpling shops are set to open in the near future.
Morfogen’s tenacity and vision had led to the opening of Brooklyn Dumpling Shops in Hoboken, NJ and Storrs, CT. Franchising is underway and there are multiple unit openings slated for Georgia, Florida, and Texas by the end of 2022.
Morfogen believes that adapting to new technology is one of the keys to thriving in the hospitality industry, a field that he believes is generally late to accepting technological modernism. “The businesses that were the most exposed during the pandemic had nothing, no technology, online ordering or websites,” Morfogen said. In the Darwinian battle to live through Covid, accepting the changing times by keeping up and working with new technology was part of Morfogen’s mantra.
More of his advice and firsthand experiences in the industry are offered in Be a Disruptor, with insights and feats that were learned through tough times, and successes deriving from what could be compared to a Scorsese thriller. Be a Disruptor offers an intriguing perspective on the reality of the New York City hospitality industry, its changes throughout time, and one businessman figuring it all out.
This industry must read is available on Amazon. And yes, the movie rights are currently being negotiated with several major studios.
