For decades, Greek families owned roughly two-thirds of all diners in New York City. That era is ending fast. The Cozy S...

For decades, Greek families owned roughly two-thirds of all diners in New York City. That era is ending fast. The Cozy Soup 'n' Burger on Astor Place and Broadway in East Village closed on June 21 after 54 years in business. The diner had been a neighborhood fixture for NYU students, night-shift workers, and tourists since 1972, and even appeared in the Adam Sandler film Big Daddy. A few days earlier, popular Greek taverna Kiki's in Chinatown shut its doors, and Star on 18 Café at 10th Avenue and 18th Street followed on May 31. John Stratz, third-generation owner of Cozy Soup 'n' Burger, described a double squeeze of rising operating costs and declining foot traffic. Rent increases, higher ingredient prices, and a minimum wage that climbed from $9 to $16 in just five years made it impossible to keep going, he said, calling the closure "the end of an era." Betty Giulis, owner of Star on 18 Café, said she plans to reopen somewhere in Queens. Petros Gromitsaris, who runs the Ewing Diner in New Jersey, pointed directly at labor costs, noting that minimum wage could soon hit $25 an hour. He also said the older generation is fading out while younger Greeks show little interest in the grueling hours diner work demands. The story of Greek diners in New York goes back to the immigration waves of 1890 to 1921, when Greeks arriving on the East Coast opened small coffee houses before moving into the diner format that took off after World War II. By the mid-1990s, Greek families ran the majority of the city's diners, operating them around the clock with the whole family working every station. The combination of soaring rents, pandemic-era disruption, and generational shift away from the business has left a gap that New Yorkers have started calling, half-jokingly, the "Greek Diner Collapse Syndrome." #GreekDiners #NewYork #GreekDiaspora