Star Deli, a cash-only Polish bakery and deli on Nassau Avenue in Greenpoint, was only months away from closing earlier this summer. Owner Zbigniew Stankowski had been running the 30-year-old shop largely under the radar, with just 17 reviews on Google and no social media presence, until a video from a stranger changed the trajectory of his business almost overnight.
That stranger was Shuayb Qureshi, a 31-year-old software engineer who was laid off from Meta in May 2026, part of a round of cuts that hit mostly managers and software engineers, according to Business Insider. Qureshi, who grew up between Kuwait and Toronto and had lived in a Menlo Park apartment complex with other Meta engineers, had already started posting videos to Instagram, shifting from tech-bro content toward reviews of little-known food spots across Brooklyn and Queens. He posted a video about the stress of layoff rumors in May before Meta ultimately let go of roughly 8,000 employees, per the outlet's reporting.
Qureshi didn't stumble onto Star Deli by accident. He had been crowdsourcing leads on Reddit, posting in food-focused channels like r/FoodNYC to find struggling, family-owned neighborhood eateries in North Brooklyn without any social media marketing, according to a Reddit thread where a local user pointed him toward the shop. He posted his first Star Deli video on June 9, 2026, filming with Meta smart glasses as Stankowski discussed the difficulties of keeping the bakery running.
A Tip Refused, A Freezer On Its Last Legs
During that first visit, Stankowski reportedly tried to refuse a tip Qureshi offered for a cheesecake purchase, an exchange that became part of the video's appeal, per Business Insider's account. Stankowski told Qureshi the bakery's situation was very bad. The video, which captured the shop's traditional wares — house-made Polish cheesecake sold by the pound, paczki, pierogies, makowiec, and fresh kielbasa, as described on the deli's Facebook page — took off, drawing 1.5 million views and more than 100,000 likes.
A follow-up video posted five days later kept the momentum going, and it was during this window that Qureshi learned the bakery's commercial freezer was failing, threatening the business with permanent closure. He launched a GoFundMe campaign titled Help Save Star Deli's Freezer on June 22, 2026, with an $8,000 target intended to cover a new freezer and other store upgrades, according to the GoFundMe page. The fundraiser has since raised more than $7,000, per Business Insider.
From 17 Reviews To A Viral Sensation
The digital transformation was immediate. Star Deli, which had no social media footprint before June, gained over 230 new Google reviews within weeks of the video campaign, the GoFundMe page notes. Qureshi's broader multi-part series on the bakery, posted under his Instagram handle @pov.outside, has accumulated more than 4 million total views, according to Greenpointers.
Speaking on New York news radio station 1010 WINS in August, Stankowski said Qureshi's intervention and fundraising “saved his life.” Qureshi has said his videos give him a natural human high, and he has described using the format — talking to strangers on camera — as a way to reclaim a sense of social connection he felt he'd lost, telling Business Insider he experienced imposter syndrome and significant stress during his time at Meta, where engineers were shuttled to and from the office in company vans. He has since become something of an influencer himself, occasionally recognized on the street, and now selects the restaurants he visits based on direct messages and Reddit leads from followers.
A Neighborhood Under Pressure
Star Deli's brush with closure fits into a much larger pattern in Greenpoint, a neighborhood long known as “Little Poland” for the waves of Polish immigration that shaped it in the late 20th century. Many of the area's traditional Polish butcher shops, bakeries, and markets have shuttered in recent years under pressure from gentrification and rising commercial rents, according to the Greenpoint Star.
The pressures facing small, family-run shops like Star Deli extend citywide. A New York City Economic Development Corporation report found the city suffered a net loss of 4,900 businesses in the second quarter of 2025 alone, as 8,400 closures outstripped 3,500 new business formations, per China Daily. Data compiled by the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce showed the losses continued into the following quarter, with the city losing a net 1,050 businesses as 5,700 storefronts closed against 4,660 openings. A February 2026 analysis from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that small businesses with fewer than 10 employees, which make up nearly two-thirds of regional small firms, face significantly greater profitability pressures than larger companies, since they typically lack the cash reserves to absorb an unexpected expense like a broken freezer.
Against that backdrop, Star Deli's rescue is notable but not necessarily a permanent fix. The bakery still operates on thin margins in a neighborhood where demographic shifts and high fixed costs have already claimed many of its Polish-owned peers. For now, though, the freezer is being repaired, the shop is busier than it's been in years, and Stankowski has a new audience of customers who found him through a stranger's phone camera.
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