A fire tore through the second floor of the Franklin Street building housing Sereneco on Friday morning, injuring several firefighters and forcing the beloved Greenpoint restaurant to close indefinitely just days before it was set to celebrate its fifth anniversary. Now a GoFundMe campaign is racing to raise $35,000 to help the restaurant's staff, who are suddenly out of work with no clear timeline for when they might return to their jobs.
The fire broke out around 10:46 a.m. on August 28, according to Greenpointers, which reported that firefighters used ladder trucks to cut openings in the roof for ventilation before finally containing the blaze at 12:35 p.m. As reported by Brooklyn Paper, the fire required a response from 79 FDNY and EMS personnel and took nearly two hours to bring under control inside the non-fireproof, two-story commercial building. Several firefighters suffered what were described as minor injuries and were transported to NYU Langone, per the outlet.
The blaze started on the second floor of the multi-tenant building at 113 Franklin Street, according to Brooklyn Paper, with FDNY response videos posted to an Instagram account indicating the fire was located in the kitchen walls of the building. Sereneco owner Billy Van Dolsen is now working through the insurance process while assessing the fire damage, the outlet reports, a process he said can take months even as he plans to rebuild and reopen the restaurant.
A Milestone Party Turned Into a Shutdown
The timing stung. Sereneco had just announced plans to host its 5th Anniversary Party on September 3, featuring an all-night happy hour and a vinyl DJ set for neighborhood regulars, according to a post on the restaurant's Facebook page. The restaurant first opened in the late summer of 2021 inside the ground floor of a building within Greenpoint's historic Eberhard Faber Pencil Factory landmark district, according to Time Out. Before Sereneco moved in, the corner space had been home to the popular cocktail lounge Ramona, per On the Grid.
Sereneco's 70-seat dining room was custom-designed by Brooklyn architecture studio Carpenter + Mason using Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired Usonian principles, with 20-foot ceilings, skylights, and a green marble bar with a live ficus tree growing through it, according to e-architect. Van Dolsen reportedly chose the restaurant's name — the Esperanto word for serenity — after completing 300 hours of meditation instructor training and silent retreats, an approach he wanted to bring to managing hospitality industry stress.
GoFundMe Targets Direct Relief for Staff
Sereneco staff are now out of work for the foreseeable future, and Van Dolsen said his team is without income while the restaurant remains closed, according to Brooklyn Paper. He said 100% of donations to the GoFundMe will go directly to employees who lost their income, with the money explicitly not intended to rebuild the restaurant or compensate ownership. As of Monday, the fundraiser had raised more than $9,000 toward its $35,000 goal.
Creative studio Valentine Studios helped organize the campaign alongside Sereneco management, illustrating the kind of small-business solidarity that often follows sudden disasters in tight-knit neighborhoods like Greenpoint. Van Dolsen described the community response as encouraging, saying friends, regular customers and local businesses have all offered support. He has also offered to personally vouch for Sereneco staff seeking other jobs in the meantime and asked hiring organizations to reach out to him directly, while saying he hopes to bring back every staff member once the restaurant reopens.
A Shared Building, A Shared Disruption
The fire's effects rippled beyond Sereneco itself. The same multi-unit building at 113 Franklin Street also houses Georgian restaurant Chama Mama, taproom Threes Brewing, and Azure Gourmet, according to Brooklyn Paper. Nearby, Maman at 84 Kent Street was also temporarily closed because of the fire, the outlet reported.
It's the second major emergency to hit the neighborhood in recent months. A three-alarm fire at a Greenpoint recycling facility on July 3 injured 10 firefighters and drew nearly 200 emergency personnel, according to Hoodline's earlier coverage of that blaze.
What Comes Next
For now, the precise cause of the second-floor kitchen wall fire remains unclear, and there is no firm timeline for how long Sereneco's rebuild will take beyond Van Dolsen's estimate of months. Displaced workers may also be eligible for state unemployment benefits, which New York raised last October to a maximum of $869 per week after paying off its federal trust fund debt, according to the New York State Department of Labor — though processing delays remain common for tip-earning hospitality workers trying to bridge the gap. Until Sereneco's kitchen and dining room reopen, the GoFundMe stands as the most direct source of relief for a staff suddenly cut off from their paychecks just as they were preparing to celebrate five years in business.
