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America’s obsession with avocados runs deep, and it doesn’t look to be slowing down any time soon. We’re putting the fruit on our toast, in our salads and on every sandwich imaginable. At this point, it wouldn't be surprising if someone engineered a safe way to inject the green stuff straight into our veins. Our national admiration for avocados led to a shortage in 2016, causing their cost to soar through the roof.
Last year, New Yorkers’ love for avocados was taken to its logical limit when a new restaurant opened in Brooklyn with one simple mission: Put them on everything. The spot, called Avocaderia, bills itself as the “world’s first avocado bar.” Its menu includes six varieties of avocado toast, four avocado-filled bowls, a trio of avocado smoothies and a handful of other items all revolving around the pit-filled deity.
The restaurant has enjoyed a great deal of buzz since opening in Sunset Park’s Industry City, enough to enable it to open another location at a Chelsea Terminal Warehouse this spring. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. On Sunday night, Avocaderia’s owner Alessandro Biggi appeared on an episode of Shark Tank, the ABC show that aims to make Americans believe that rich people actually care about small businesses. He presented his pitch, allowed the hosts to taste his dishes and walked away with a $400,000 investment in exchange for 20 percent of his company.
During his presentation, Biggie boasted that his shop did $75,000 in sales over the previous month and is projected to rake in $4.3 million of revenue in 2018. The investment, he says, will allow him to open 20 new restaurants, bringing his all-avocado concepts to the rest of the country.
So get ready, rest of America—you’re about to get a chance to taste the refreshing, quasi-healthy child of show business and venture capitalism.
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